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, NY; 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, CT; 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, NY; 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.
