New York State Considers Cancer Incidence Map Availablity

This information has been collected by the State Department of Health for years, but a new state proposal would make the database available to the public.

The online map would also plot where industrial facilities like power plants and chemical factories are located.

Cancer awareness advocates and supporters of the plan say they are unaware of any other state that culls and reports cancer data in such a way.

The Health Department already publishes on its Web site, www.health.state.ny.us, maps that depict the number of cancer cases in each county. But the measure approved by the Legislature would require the department to plot cancer cases by census bloc, the smallest geographic entity that the federal government uses to tabulate information for its decennial census. The federal National Cancer Institute also provides county-by-county maps of cancer cases for the entire country going back decades.

Supporters of the maps argue that they provide an essential public service by letting people know whether the area where they live has an unusually high number of people with cancer. But others say that geographical cancer data is too prone to misinterpretation, especially by people without medical training, and that they lead the public to see a cause-and-effect relationship that is not necessarily there.

Senator Thomas W. Libous, a Republican from Binghamton who sponsored the bill in the Senate, said that while not every area with a high rate of cancer has something in the environment causing it, he believes some areas do.

I think this is a very good idea, though I expect some people will come away with misinformation from the data collected - assuming causality where none exists. Then again, some researchers might find that the data is useful in evaluating environmental claims and tracking down possible causes for cancer clusters.

I hope that other states take a cue from New York and release data in a similar fashion.

UPDATE:
Fixed the title to clarify that this was passed by the legislature and still needs to be enacted into law.