Long Island Breast Cancer Study Project
GIS-H Update:
A New Research Tool for Breast Cancer Studies
February 29, 2000
Introduction
The development of a new tool, called a geographic information
system (GIS), to enhance the ability of researchers to study potential
relationships between environment contamination and breast cancer
on Long Island, is off to a great start. The contract is awarded,
town meetings were held on Long Island to obtain historical information
on environmental exposures from residents, and most recently, the
members to the GIS-H Oversight Committee, which includes five community
representatives, were appointed.
GIS-H
Last year, as part of the Long Island Breast Cancer Study Project
(LIBCSP), the National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded a $4.87 million
contract for the development of the prototype GIS-H for breast cancer
studies on Long Island. The first two years of the contract are
to develop and deliver the system, and there are three option years
for system maintenance and data expansion to respond to research
needs.
GISs are powerful computer systems that can store, manipulate,
analyze, and display the spatial (geographic location) relationships
between dissimilar data types. The system being developed for Long
Island is called the GIS-H, with the "H" standing for "health" to
emphasize its health application.
The GIS-H team is busily acquiring and evaluating datasets for
the system. Fifty datasets were slated for inclusion in the GIS.
These datasets come from federal state, and local government sources,
as well as private sources. They are of four types: geospatial data
(for general mapping purposes), demographic data, health outcome
and health care data, and environmental data. Summary information
on the datasets can be viewed at the GIS-H
Web site.
Town Meetings
In addition, last October, the GIS-H team held seven town meetings
over four days in four locations on Long Island to hear from residents
about sources of environmental pollution and past land use that
may not be in existing records. Ellen Heineman, Ph.D., NCI Project
Officer; Roger Crystal, Project Director, AverStar, Inc.; and Iris
Obrams, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Director, Epidemiology and Genetics
Research Program, NCI, along with Linda Anderson, LIBCSP Communications
Director, and other members of the team, traveled to listen and
learn from residents about the history of Long Island and its environment.
The residents' most frequently discussed environmental concerns
focused on contaminated water, and exposures to pesticides, industrial
chemicals, radiation, and electromagnetic fields (EMFs). One Suffolk
County resident shared a county government map of sewage treatment
plants on which she had hand drawn an overlay showing the location
of waterways closed to shellfish fishing and with high coliform
counts (bacteria associated with pollution). Another map pinpointed
the location of plumes seeping from a hazardous waste site at different
time periods.
A resident mentioned water contamination in a local swimming hole.
Another mentioned a factory that had had a large fire, and had changed
names over several decades, and therefore might not appear in databases
of industrial sites. Someone recollected that as children they considered
the soil near power right-of-ways "magic dirt" because nothing grew
in it, presumably because of heavy herbicide use. Other community
members mentioned the locations of old agricultural records, underground
storage tanks, chemical spills, and other sources of pollutants.
The amount of work community members put into trying to track potential
environmental hazards, and the interest they showed by coming forward
to tell what they knew was impressive. The GIS-H team is reviewing
the contributions made with an eye toward using the information
to identify and perhaps fill gaps in the system. The residents'
information can be used as leads to look for other datasets, and
to compare with datasets from published sources and assess their
completeness.
The community is welcome to continue to submit information by writing
to: LIBCSP-GIS c/o NOVA Research Company, 4600 East-West Highway,
Suite 700, Bethesda, Md. 20814-3415. In submitting contributions,
it would be helpful to know: (1) What the specific environmental
event or concern is? (2) Where the event or concern occurred? (3)
When it occurred? and 4) Who might provide more details or has written
records about it? The kinds of information that would be helpful
include: (1) how land was used for agriculture purposes, such as
the crops grown, before the mid-1970s when record keeping improved;
(2) the location(s) of closed gas stations; underground fuel storage
tanks and leaks, automobile storage, maintenance, and fuel activities;
power stations; and military bases; and (3) the location(s) of other
small industries, both past and present, whose locations may be
unrecorded.
Oversight Committee
The Oversight Committee will advise NCI and AverStar on key issues,
including overseeing the creation of the GIS-H, reviewing the data
to be included and the research proposals for use of the system,
and offering advice on strategies for protecting the confidentiality
of data. It meets for the first time on March 8 and will focus on
review of the GIS-H team's findings on the datasets, recommendations
for substitutions and additions, prioritization of datasets, and
integration of community-based information.
The committee convenes twice yearly in person and twice via conference
call. One of the yearly in-person meetings will be held in the Washington,
D.C., area, and the other will be held on Long Island. The first
meeting is March 8 in Bethesda, Md., and plans are to meet on Long
Island in September, if the committee members are able to identify
a mutually agreeable day to meet that month. The Long Island meeting
will provide an easily accessible setting should members of the
community wish to observe the committee at work.
The committee includes representatives from federal, state, and
local government, academia, and the community. The five community
members are: Barbara J. Balaban, A.C.S.W., Copiague; Sarah J. Meyland,
M.S., J.D., Farmingdale; Karen J. Miller, Melville; Martha M. Rogers,
J.D., Southampton; and Victoria White, Hempstead.
Other members are: Gerry Akland, M.S., Principal Scientist for
Exposure Research, Research Triangle Institute, Research Triangle
Park, N.C., and also a member of the ad hoc Advisory Committee to
the LIBCSP; Larry Alber, GIS Project Manager, New York State (NYS)
Department of Environmental Conservation, Albany, N.Y.; Frederick
R. Broome, Chief, Geospatial Research and Standards Staff, Geography
Division, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Washington, D.C.; William Henriques,
Ph.D., GIS Coordinator, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease
Registry, Atlanta, Ga.; Jeffrey P. Kahn, Ph.D., M.P.H., Director,
Center for Bioethics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.;
Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director, Division
of Biostatistics, University of Connecticut School of Medicine,
Farmington, Conn.; and Linda W. Pickle, Ph.D., Senior Mathematical
Statistician, Statistical Research and Applications Branch, Surveillance
Research Program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences,
NCI, Bethesda, Md.
Remaining members are: Peggy Reynolds, Ph.D., Chief, Environmental
Epidemiology and Geographic Information Section, Environmental Health
Investigations Branch, California Department of Health Services,
Oakland, Calif.; Gerard Rushton, Ph.D., Professor of Geography,
Department of Geography, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa; Catherine
Schairer, Ph.D., Investigator, Environmental Epidemiology Branch,
Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG), NCI, Bethesda,
Md.; Tom Talbot, Chief, Geographic Research and Analysis Section,
NYS Department of Health, Bureau of Occupational and Environmental
Epidemiology, Troy, N.Y.; and Mary Ward, Ph.D., Investigator, Occupational
Epidemiology Branch, DCEG, NCI, Bethesda, Md. The chair is Dr. Gerard
Rushton.
Community members and researchers are welcome to follow the GIS-H's
progress on its Web site.
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