Spanish epidemiologists and geologists have found associations between esophageal cancer and soils where lead is abundant, lung cancer and terrains with increased copper content, brain tumor with areas rich in arsenic, and bladder cancer with high cadmium levels. These statistical links do not indicate that there is a cause-effect relationship between soil type and cancer, but they suggest that the influence of metals from the earth's surface on the geographical distribution of tumors should be analyzed.
Spanish epidemiologists and geologists have found associations between esophageal cancer and soils where lead is abundant, lung cancer and terrains with increased copper content, brain tumor with areas rich in arsenic, and bladder cancer with high cadmium levels. These statistical links do not indicate that there is a cause-effect relationship between soil type and cancer, but they suggest that the influence of metals from the earth's surface on the geographical distribution of tumors should be analyzed.
The risk of dying from cancer is not the same in all geographic regions. There are many factors that influence, including the type of soil, since it can harbor heavy metals and semimetals that are carcinogenic for humans. The chronic exposure of a population to these toxic elements, which enter the body through the food chain and food, could increase the frequency of certain tumors in some territories.
In this context, researchers from the National Epidemiology Center of the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) and the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain (IGME) have jointly assessed the possible statistical association between the concentrations of heavy metals in the soil and mortality by different cancer types. The results have been published in the open access journals Environmental Geochemistry and Health and Environmental Science and Pollution Research International.
The data has been extracted from the Spain´s Geochemical Atlas, published by the IGME in 2012, as well as from a database with 861,440 deaths from 27 cancer types that occurred in almost 8,000 Spanish municipalities between 1999 and 2008. The data can be extrapolated to the present because the geochemical composition of the soil is stable and the mortality patterns for this disease usually do not vary.
Read more at FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology
Image: This is spatial distribution of the composition of metals in soil in the Spanish municipalities of the Iberian Peninsula, specifically, zinc (Zn), aluminum (Al), manganese (Mn), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb) and arsenic (As) . (Credit: G. López-Abente et al./Environ Sci Pollut Res Int.)
