Association between proximity to industrial chemical installations and cancer mortality in Spain Ayuso-Álvarez, Ana García-Pérez, Javier Triviño-Juárez, José-Matías Larrinaga-Torrontegui, Unai González-Sánchez, Mario Ramis, Rebeca Boldo, Elena López-Abente, Gonzalo Galán, Iñaki Fernández-Navarro, Pablo It is likely that pollution from chemical facilities will affect the health of any exposed population; however, the majority of scientific evidence available has focused on occupational exposure rather than environmental. Consequently, this study assessed whether there could have been an excess of cancer- related mortality associated with environmental exposure to pollution from chemical installations e for populations residing in municipalities in the vicinity of chemical industries. To this end, we designed an ecological study which assessed municipal mortality due to 32 types of cancer in the period from 1999 to 2008. The exposure to pollution was estimated using distance from the facilities to the centroid of the municipality as a proxy for exposure. In order to assess any increased cancer mortality risk in munici- palities potentially exposed to chemical facilities pollution (situated at a distance of 5 km from a chemical installation), we employed Bayesian Hierarchical Poisson Regression Models. This included two Bayesian inference methods: Integrated Nested Laplace Approximations (INLA) and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC, for validation). The reference category consisted of municipalities beyond the 5 km limit. We found higher mortality risk (relative risk, RR; estimated by INLA, 95% credible interval, 95%CrI) for both sexes for colorectal (RR, 1.09; 95%CrI, 1.05e1.15), gallbladder (1.14; 1.03e1.27), and ovarian cancers (1.10; 1.02e1.20) associated with organic chemical installations. Notably, pleural cancer (2.27; 1.49e3.41) in both sexes was related to fertilizer facilities. Associations were found for women, specifically for ovarian (1.11; 1.01e1.22) and breast cancers (1.06; 1.00e1.13) in the proximity of explosives/pyrotechnics installations; increased breast cancer mortality risk (1.10; 1.03e1.18) was associated with proximity to inorganic chemical installations. The results suggest that environmental exposure to pollutants from some types of chemical facilities may be associated with increased mortality from several different types of cancer. 2024-09-24T07:21:26Z 2024-09-24T07:21:26Z 2020 journal article Ayuso-Álvarez A, García-Pérez J, Triviño-Juárez JM, Larrinaga-Torrontegui U, González-Sánchez M, Ramis R, Boldo E, López-Abente G, Galán I, Fernández-Navarro P. Association between proximity to industrial chemical installations and cancer mortality in Spain. Environ Pollut. 2020 May;260:113869. doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2019.113869. Epub 2020 Jan 3. PMID: 31991345. Copy https://hdl.handle.net/10481/94945 10.1016/j.envpol.2019.113869 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Elsevier