According to a newspaper account for the epidemic occurrence of cancer patients at an area of Pukcheju-gun, epidemic survey was conducted to identify the epidemicity and possible cause of the cancer epidemic from Sep. 23, 1993 to Sep. 28, 1993.
Household survey for identifying prevalent cases and causes of deaths, including cancer, sampling of ground water and sea water for testing presence of carcinogenic substances, and case-control study were done.
There were 626 persons actually living at the area. During Jan. 1988 - Oct. 1993, 8 cancer cases were identified, among whom 6 patients were dead. Based on the Seoul Cancer Registry data, standardized cancer incidence ratio of the study area was
82.7%
(95% CI : 35, 149), and standardized cancer mortality ratio was 96.2% (95%CI : 35, 189). There was no female cancer cases, no temporal clusting pattern of cancer occurrence and no clustering of specific types of cancer. In the evaluation of
ground
water
and sea water, carcinogenic substance were not detected.
According to the above evidences, it was difficult to confirm that there was an epidemic occurrence of cancer at the area, And the possibility of the association of environmental carcinogenic factors with the cancer occurrence seemed to the very
low.
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