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Close proximity to oil, gas development areas may increase risk for pediatric ALL
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Young people living in Colorado diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia were more likely to live in areas with a high-density of oil and gas development, according to study results.
This suggests that people living in these areas may have an increased risk for cancer, researchers wrote.
“The findings from our registry-based case–control study indicate that young Coloradans diagnosed with one type of childhood leukemia are more likely to live in the densest areas of oil and gas sites,” Lisa McKenzie, PhD, MPH, assistant research professor, Colorado School of Public Health at CU Anschutz, said in a press release.
U.S. oil and gas development has increased during the past decade and potentially secretes toxic substances — including carcinogens — into air and water through drilling, hydraulic fracturing and production. This type of oil and gas development expanded rapidly in Colorado starting in 2000, so that by 2013, there were more than 51,000 oil and gas wells in the state.
“[More than] 378,000 Coloradans and millions of Americans … live within a mile of at least one oil and gas well, and petroleum development continues to expand into residential areas,” McKenzie said.
McKenzie and colleagues used the Colorado Central Cancer Registry to examine cancer incidence among 957 children aged 0 to 24 years between 2001 and 2013. To estimate density of oil and gas development, the researchers used data from the Colorado Oil and Gas Information registry located at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to calculate inverse distance-weighted (IDW) oil and gas well counts within a 10-mile radius of residence at cancer diagnosis for each year in a 10-year latency period.
The final analysis included 743 children with cancer who had geocoded precise addresses, 73% of whom resided in a home within one of the IDW well-count tertiles.
Of these patients, researchers compared data from 87 children with acute lymphocytic leukemia and 50 children with non-Hodgkin lymphoma with data from 528 controls with nonhematologic cancers.
Compared with controls, children with ALL were more likely to be boys of nonwhite race aged 10 years or younger and to live at an elevation higher than 2,743 meters and in the highest zip code median-income quintile. Children with non-Hodgkin lymphoma were more likely to be boys of nonwhite race aged 5 to 14 years and to live in the middle zip code median-income quintiles.
After adjustment for age, race, sex, income and elevation, children with ALL were nearly two times as likely to live in an area with the highest IDW well-count tertile — defined as 33.6 wells per 1 mile — during the latency period compared with controls (OR = 1.9; 95% CI, 0.78-4.8).
Among children aged 5 to 24 years, those with ALL were 4.3 (95% CI, 1.1-16) times as likely to live in an area with the highest well-count tertile compared with controls.
The researchers observed a monotonic increase in risk across tertiles (P for trend = .035). After adjustment for year of diagnosis, the association increased.
However, researchers observed no association between ALL for children aged 0 to 4 years, nor for non-Hodgkin lymphoma and IDW well counts. These findings were consistent with results of a secondary analysis that used a 5-mile radius.
“While our study benefited from the ability to select cases and controls from the same population, use of cancer controls, the limited number of ALL and NHL cases, and aggregation of ages into 5-year ranges, may have biased our associations toward the null,” the researchers wrote.
“More comprehensive research that can address our study’s limitations is needed to understand and explain these results,” McKenzie said. – by Melinda Stevens
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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