Environmental Epidemiology, Volume 1 Public Health and Hazardous Wastes (1991) / Chapter Skim
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5. Domestic Water Consumption
5. Domestic Water Consumption
Pages 179-202
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From page 179... ...
to ensure the safety of the nation's water supply. In general, water supplies are now safe bacteriologically, and usually free of gross contamination or obvious chemical pollution.
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From page 180... ...
Then it assesses the relatively scanty literature on adverse effects that can be linked to the contamination of drinking water from toxic dump sites, including congenital anomalies, cancer, and other chronic diseases. As the importance of lead in drinking water is currently the subject of extensive analysis and regulatory attention, this chapter does not review this topic.
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From page 181... ...
(1985) studied cancer incidence data for the years 1969-1981 from the Iowa cancer registry for towns with a public water supply from a single stable ground source and the levels of volatile organic compounds and metals found in the finished drinking water of these towns in 1979.
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From page 182... ...
Water source, chlorine dose, and the concentrations of asbestos, chloroform, total THMs except chloroform, and total THMs were not significantly correlated with any of the disease categories examined, which comprised all causes of death, all cancers, various cancer sites, and coronary heart disease mortality. When dose of total organic carbon was substituted for chlorine dose in a multivariate analysis, there was a significant association with large intestine cancer among males.
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From page 183... ...
In particular, women and nonsmokers of both sexes, who consumed chlorinated surface water at rates above the median for 60 or more years, had rates of bladder cancer that were more than three times the rates of those who had not consumed treated surface water. In an analysis of the Iowa portion of a national bladder case-control study on bladder cancer, the effect of misclassification on estimates of years of exposure to chlorinated drinking water was investigated (Lynch et al., 1989~.
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From page 184... ...
TOXIC DUMP SITE EXPOSURES CANCER AS THE END POINT Love Canal, New York, is perhaps the best known of toxic dump sites. Human exposure there to chemicals was through contaminated water, although not strictly through drinking water.
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From page 185... ...
At the county level they found associations with most gastrointestinal cancers (Najem et al., 1983~. In addition, an analysis of age-adjusted female reproductive organ and breast cancer mortality showed significant positive associations between breast cancer mortality and proximity to toxic disposal sites among whites in 21 New Jersey counties (Najem and Greer, 1985~.
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From page 186... ...
The New Jersey Department of Health (Fagliano et al., 1987, 1990) conducted an ecologic study to determine whether there was a relationship between incidence of leukemia and contamination of public drinking-water supplies with volatile organic compounds (trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, and related chlorinated solvents)
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From page 187... ...
of hazardous-waste sites developed by EPA and cancer mortality data for 13 major cancer sites by county for 1970-1979. The NPL identified 593 waste sites in 339 U.S.
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From page 188... ...
From 1980 through 1982, 183 patients with esophageal cancer, or 17 percent of all such cases referred to the King Faisal Specialist Research Center, came from the Gassim region of Saudi Arabia, compared with 5 percent of the total cancer patient referrals from this region (Amer et al., 1990~. This observation prompted a case-control study of cases diagnosed between 1983 and 1987.
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From page 189... ...
Although this is a reasonable inference from the data presented, it is unclear whether other differences between the regions can explain the differences seen. There are marked variations in esophageal cancer incidence in many areas, some of which could be attributable to differences in nutrition or use of opium.
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From page 190... ...
Using single family homes in the entire Love Canal neighborhood an area three times as large as that included in Vianna and Polan- they found an excess of low birth weight between the years 1963 and 1980. The adjusted odds ratio was 3.0 (range, 1.3 to 7.0)
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From page 191... ...
However, from 1940 through 1953, the period when various chemicals were dumped in the site, there was a significant excess of low birth weight among infants born in the Love Canal swale area, an area of natural, low-lying drainage depressions that traverse the dump site. An ecologic study was performed to evaluate the relationship between dibromochloropropane (DBCP)
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From page 192... ...
In the second study, a cluster of adverse pregnancy outcomes, including spontaneous abortions, low birth weight, and congenital malformations, was identified (Deane et al., 1989~. An odds ratio of 2.3 for spontaneous abortion was found in comparison to a census tract free of contaminated water, while the odds ratio for congenital malformations was 3.1.
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From page 193... ...
The adverse pregnancy outcomes occurred in areas with lower exposure levels, as opposed to those with higher exposure levels; causes remain unknown. An association has been reported between congenital heart disease and contamination of groundwater in the Tucson valley of Arizona (Goldberg et al., 1990~.
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From page 194... ...
One cross-sectional study of health problems compared rates of morbidity and mortality from 1980-1985 for a number of chronic diseases, including heart disease, anemia, skin cancer, hypertension, stroke, and chronic kidney disease, in residents of three towns surrounding an abandoned Superfund site in Galena, Kansas, with those of residents in two control towns (Neuberger et al., 1990~. Environmental
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From page 195... ...
OTHER HEALTH END POINTS An environmental health survey of residents who had consumed drinking water contaminated with leachate from a waste dump where a pesticide plant had deposited large amounts of liquid and solid waste between 1964 and 1972 was conducted in Hardeman County, Tennessee (Clark et al., 1982~. Twelve chlorinated organic compounds were found in wells that served individuals living near the dump site.
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From page 196... ...
to conduct the measurements. Of the Love Canal children, the 172 born there who had spent at least 75 percent of their lives in the Love Canal area were significantly shorter for age percentile than were the control children.
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From page 197... ...
One study of pesticide contamination was done in a village in Nicaragua, where children from a community in the path of rainwater runoff from a large crop-dusting airport were tested for cholinesterase levels in comparison with children from an unexposed community (McConnell et al., 1990~. Six of 17 children from the exposed community had low cholinesterase levels, the mean level for the 17 being 0.5 international units/milliliter/minute lower (95 percent CI 0.24-0.76)
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From page 198... ...
from obfuscating the issue. In Love Canal, low birth weight was clearly linked to exposures from the hazardous wastes,
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1987. Bladder cancer, drinking water source, and tap water consumption: A case-control study.
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From page 200... ...
1985. Low birth weight, prematurity, and birth defects in children living near the hazardous waste site, Love Canal.
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From page 201... ...
1987. Growth of children living near the hazardous waste site Love Canal, New York, USA.
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From page 202... ...
1984. Incidence of low birth weight among Love Canal residents.
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