"Residential Exposure to Power Plants as a Potential Breast Cancer Risk Factor: A report of Miguel Aleman, Sonora, Mexico"

Abstract

Background: Breast cancer is a common female cancer worldwide. Well-established risk factors represent approximately 40% of the variability in cancer incidence, leaving a great number of other factors that could contribute to carcinogenesis. One of those is the residential exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) produced by electric power plants. Sonora is a state in Mexico with a high incidence of breast cancer. Miguel Aleman, a community of scarce resources in Sonora, represents a population of interest due to its high morbidity and mortality of breast cancer cases. The aim of this study is to provide evidence of residential exposure to EMF as a possible breast cancer risk factor in Miguel Aleman. Methods: We created a breast cancer database with cases collected from hospitals and used GeoData (version 1.8) to localize active electric power plants. For this analysis, inclusion criteria were breast cancer cases of at least 10 years of residence in Miguel Aleman. Foreign cases or those of recent residence in Miguel Aleman were excluded from the present analysis. For the geospatial analysis, neighborhoods were used as a geographical unit for the identification of breast cancer clusters. Results: Geospatial analysis indicates a Moran’s I = 0.014 and two breast cancer clusters. One of them is a High-High (H-H) cluster, and the other one is a High-Low (H-L), both with a pseudo-p-value < 0.018 (permutations: 999). Those two clusters have the highest population density in terms of breast cancer cases, and there is an electric power plant inside of them. Non-exposure to EMF was estimated in terms of a distance (meters). The model indicates a minimum of 1400 meters to that of an electric power plant to consider non-residential exposure to EMF. This research work provides evidence of two cancer clusters as residentially exposed to EMF, a potential breast cancer risk factor.