Breast, lung, leukemia, and colon cancer survival analysis for USA, Kentucky, and Purchase Area Development District: 1996-2000

This poster is an outgrowth of development for analysis of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PGDP) Worker's Study for the time period 1953-2003. PGDP was a DOE facility until 1998. The cohort being analyzed is 6,858 workers. PGDP's main function has been to produce enriched uranium for commercial reactors. During the late 1990's, public concerns were growing about environmental and worker health issues at PGDP. This is the only gaseous diffusion plant in the U.S. that has not undergone a health study. Between 1953-2003, cause-specific mortality in Kentucky changed dramatically. This is largely due to two reasons: increasing longevity of the overall population and smoking-related deaths. In preparation to adjust cohort analysis for the changing patterns that occurred between 1953-2003, we will compare Purchase Area Development District (ADD; includes Paducah) survival to the state, nation, and other ADDs. To better understand with-in state variation for leukemia, survival data organized for Kentucky's fifteen ADDs was used. Cancers included in this survival comparison analysis are lung, breast, leukemia, and colon. Examined populations include all races and both sexes. We report an analysis for the aforementioned cancer survival patterns using data from the Kentucky Cancer Registry and from SEER. The analysis shows declining life expectancy as a function of cause-specific mortality, and markedly lower leukemia survival rates in the Purchase ADD as compared to the nation, KY, and other ADDs. We also report that there is more district-to-district variation with leukemia survival than what might be expected to occur solely by chance.