Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA) Exposures and Incident Cancers among Adults Living Near a Chemical Plant
By Vaughn Barry, A. Winquist, Kyle Steenland. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2013
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Background: Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is a synthetic chemical ubiquitous in the serum of U.S. residents. It causes liver, testicular, and pancreatic tumors in rats. Human studies are sparse. Objective: We examined cancer incidence in Mid-Ohio Valley residents exposed to PFOA in drinking water due to chemical plant emissions. Methods: The cohort consisted of adult community residents who resided in contaminated water districts or worked at a local chemical plant. Most participated in a 2005–2006 baseline survey in which serum PFOA was measured. We interviewed the cohort in 2008–2011 to obtain further medical history. Retrospective yearly PFOA serum concentrations were estimated for each participant from 1952 through 2011. Self-reported cancers were validated through medical records and cancer registry review. We estimated the association between cancer and cumulative PFOA serum concentration using proportional hazards models. Results: Participants (n = 32,254) reported 2,507 validated cancers (21 different cancer types). Estimated cumulative serum PFOA concentrations were positively associated with kidney and testicular cancer [hazard ratio (HR) = 1.10; 95% CI: 0.98, 1.24 and HR = 1.34; 95% CI: 1.00, 1.79, respectively, for 1-unit increases in ln-transformed serum PFOA]. Categorical analyses also indicated positive trends with increasing exposures for both cancers: for kidney cancer HRs for increasing exposure quartiles were 1.0, 1.23, 1.48, and 1.58 (linear trend test p = 0.18) and for testicular cancer, HRs were 1.0, 1.04, 1.91, 3.17 (linear trend test p = 0.04). Conclusions: PFOA exposure was associated with kidney and testicular cancer in this population. Because this is largely a survivor cohort, findings must be interpreted with caution, especially for highly fatal cancers such as pancreatic and lung cancer. Citation: Barry V, Winquist A, Steenland K. 2013. Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) exposures and incident cancers among adults living near a chemical plant. Environ Health Perspect 121:1313–1318; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1306615
Subfields: Environmental Chemistry, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Water Science and Technology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/36b8bcdf76135a54442128ee2c9180b6a5a46160
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Citations in the corpus
- EDC-2: The Endocrine Society's Second Scientific Statement on Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals. (2015, background): “to the present (154)—all leading to numerous documented”
- Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substance Toxicity and Human Health Review: Current State of Knowledge and Strategies for Informing Future Research (2020, background): “2) compared to a regional population (Girardi and Merler 2019), whereas no PFAS association to cancer or advanced liver disease was reported in a 3M worker cohort or in the C8 Health study population (Lundin et al. 2009; Barry et al. 2013; Vieira et al. 2013).”
- Advances in barrier coatings and film technologies for achieving sustainable packaging of food products – A review (2021, background): “Starting in 2015 some long-chain PFASs have begun being regulated or phased out due to their health risk issues with kidney, cancer, and thyroid related diseases (Barry et al., 2013; Fei et al., 2007; Stein et al., 2009).”