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Drinking water: a risk factor for high incidence of esophageal cancer in Anyang, China

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Abstract

Anyang is known to be a high-incidence area of esophageal cancer (EC) in China. Among a long list of risk factors, the quality of drinking water was evaluated. We have selected 3806 individuals and collected 550 drinking water samples correspondent with this not-matched case–control survey. There are 531 EC patients included based on Population Cancer Registry from 92 townships, of which 3275 controls with long-lived aged over 90 years and free from EC are used as controls in the same regions. Our result suggests that the quality of drinking water is a highly associated risk factor for EC. The residential ecological environment and the quality of water resource positively link with each other. The analysis of water samples also demonstrated that the concentrations of methyl ethylamine, morpholine, N-methylbenzylamine, nitrate and chloride in water from springs and rivers are higher than those in well and tap water (P = 0.001). Micronuclei formation tests show that well water and tap water in these regions have no mutagenicity.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to express our gratitude to Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China for financially supporting this research (#2009AA02Z421). This study was also supported by Key Project of Henan Provincial Education Department (#13A310660). We would also like to extend our thanks to barefoot doctors in each village for their help to collect water samples and to interview and investigate each individual.

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Correspondence to Jianying Han.

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Cao, W., Han, J., Yuan, Y. et al. Drinking water: a risk factor for high incidence of esophageal cancer in Anyang, China. Environ Geochem Health 38, 773–782 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-015-9760-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-015-9760-6

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