Exploring Exposure Assessment Using EPA Toxic Release Sites in Georgia

• Activity Number: 538
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and the Environment
• Author(s): Jeffrey Switchenko* and Catherine Bulka and Lance Waller and Christopher Flowers
• Companies: Emory University and Emory University and Emory University and Emory University
• Keywords: Environmental epidemiology ; spatial statistics ; toxic release sites ; lymphoma

Abstract

The ability to link passive exposure to toxic chemicals and disease risk represents a challenge for epidemiologists. The Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reveals locations and amounts of release for specific toxic chemicals by many industrial facilities, as well as the method of release. Popular approaches for assessing the impact of proximity to sites include mean distance to sites, establishing buffers around sites, and unit-hazard coincidence methods. We propose a variation of a distance decay metric to quantify and categorize the amount of exposure, and explore models linking passive exposure to volatile organic compounds, such as benzene, and incidence of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) using a variety of exposure time lags. Cancer case data are provided by the Georgia Comprehensive Cancer Registry. Initial results suggest an increase of NHL risk corresponding to increasing exposure levels associated with particular distance and time lags.