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Objectives The Jang-jeom Village is a small rural village in the Republic of Korea where about 80 people live. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the cancer risk has been increased since 2001 when a fertilizer factory was established in the village.
Methods Using the national population data and cancer registration data of Korea, we calculated cancer standardized incidence ratio (SIR) in the village to investigate whether more cancers occurred in the villages compared to other regions. In order to investigate whether living in the village increases the risk of cancer, a retrospective cohort was constructed using the Korean National Health Insurance data. We calculated cancer hazard ratio (HR) by using the Cox proportional hazard model, comparing the exposure area and control area. We considered potential confounding factors such as age, sex and income.
Results In the 2001-16, 23 cancer cases were identified. In the 2010-16, the SIRs of the all cancers (ICD-10 code; C00-96), all cancers except thyroid cancer (C00-72, 74-96), skin cancer except melanoma (C44) in the village were 2.05 (95%CI: 1.09-3.31), 2.22 (95%CI: 1.18-3.59), and 16.01 (95%CI: 1.51-45.88), respectively. The HRs of the all cancers, all cancers except thyroid cancer, skin cancer except melanoma, gastric cancer (C16), hepatic cancer (C22), gallbladder and biliary cancer (C23-4) of the living in the village were 1.99 (95%CI: 1.14-3.45), 2.20 (95%CI: 1.26-3.84), 11.60 (95%CI: 1.51-45.88), 3.29 (95%CI: 1.14-9.53), 6.63 (95%CI: 1.77-24.88), and 15.24 (95%CI: 3.84-60.48), compared to the living in the control area, respectively.
Conclusion The results of this study suggest the increased cancer risk in the Jang-jeom village near the fertilizer factory since 2001.
Acknowledgement This work was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Environment Research (NIER), funded by the Ministry of Environment (MOE) of the Republic of Korea (NIER-2017-03-02-053).