"Asbestos in drinking water and cancer incidence in the San Francisco Bay area"

Our plain-English summary of "Asbestos in drinking water and cancer incidence in the San Francisco Bay area", by I.T. Higgins (American Journal of Epidemiology, 1981).

The study

• Author: I.T. Higgins
• Journal: American Journal of Epidemiology
• Published: 1981;114(1):161-4
• Type of article: Letter
• Cited by: 2 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This item is a letter to the editor, not an original research study. Its author criticized an earlier paper by Kanarek and colleagues on asbestos fibers in drinking water and cancer in the San Francisco Bay area. The author argued that the paper ignored the well-known association between cancer and population density. Citing Kanarek's doctoral thesis, the author stated that high fiber concentrations were found mainly in San Francisco County and San Mateo County, with the highest in San Mateo County. The author reported that digestive tract cancer death rates were higher in San Francisco than in California as a whole. The figures in the letter's table could not be read in this copy. The author said similar differences appeared between New York City and New York State, although New York City does not have high fiber counts in its drinking water. The author also cited a similar study by Severson in the Puget Sound area as having reached negative conclusions. The author concluded that the fiber and cancer association was confounded by population density.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Letter to the editor commenting on another published study (Kanarek et al.); not original research
• Who was studied: No study population of its own. The letter discusses the San Francisco Bay area study by Kanarek et al., in particular San Francisco County (or City) and San Mateo County. It compares digestive tract cancer death rates in San Francisco with the State of California, and New York City with New York State.
• Exposure: Asbestos fibers in drinking water (the letter does not name a fiber type)
• Main results:
  • According to the author, Kanarek's doctoral thesis (not the journal paper) shows the highest fiber concentrations were in San Mateo County.
  • The author stated that digestive tract cancer death rates were higher in San Francisco than in the State of California (table 1; the table's numbers are unreadable in this copy). The author said this could not be attributed to asbestos fibers in the drinking water.
  • The author stated that similar differences are seen between New York City and New York State, although New York City does not have high fiber counts in its drinking water.
  • The author cited a similar study by Severson in the Puget Sound area as having reached negative conclusions (this is another study, not the author's own work).
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the association between asbestos fibers in drinking water and cancer reported by Kanarek et al. is confounded by population density. The author also stated that all the evidence is against the conclusion that such fibers may be a cancer hazard.

Related studies

• Asbestos in drinking water and cancer incidence in the San Francisco Bay area — M.S. Kanarek, P.M. Conforti, et al. (1980)
• The San Francisco Bay epidemiology studies on asbestos in drinking water and cancer incidence: relationship to studies in other locations and pointers for further research — M.S. Kanarek (1983)
• "Asbestos in drinking water and cancer incidence in the San Francisco Bay area" — K. Browne (1982)
• Cancer incidence in relation to asbestos in drinking water in the Puget Sound region — L. Polissar, R.K. Severson, et al. (1982)
• Cancer incidence following exposure to drinking water with asbestos leachate — H.L. Howe, P.E. Wolfgang, et al. (1989)
• Cancer incidence and asbestos in drinking water, Town of Woodstock, New York, 1980-1998 — M.L. Browne, D. Varadarajulu, et al. (2005)

Browse more research in American Journal of Epidemiology, or return to medical research.