This is a linked dataset between drinking water data and cancer data.

Drinking Water Data: County-level concentrations of arsenic from CWSs between 2000 and 2010 were collected from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network (NEPHTN) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018a). Annual mean drinking water arsenic concentrations from 2000 to 2010 were available for a total of 87,662 samples from 75,453 CWS from 26 states, representing 1,425 counties. For samples identified as non-detects, the most frequently reported values were 0.5 ppb and 1 ppb, with a range of 0 ppb to 10 ppb. For non-detect samples reported as zero, the value was substituted with a constant of 0.25 ppb (Almberg et al., 2017; Bulka et al., 2016). Of the samples that were reported as non-detects, 10.87% were reported as zeros.

Cancer Data: County-level cancer counts and incidence rates for bladder, colorectal, and kidney cancers were acquired from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and CDC’s State Cancer Profiles for 2011 through 2015 for adults (age ≥ 50) to match the counties with exposure data (National Cancer Institute and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018a). We utilized the time period 2011-2015 to provide a lag following the exposure period of 2000-2010. The State Cancer Profiles provide age-adjusted county-level cancer incidence, prevalence, mortality rates and average annual counts for 20 different types of cancers and select demographics (National Cancer Institute and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018b). Counties where there were less than 16 reported cases in a specific county, sex, and/or race category were suppressed to ensure confidentiality and stability of rate estimates (National Cancer Institute and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018a).

This dataset is associated with the following publication: Krajewski, A., M. Jimenez, K. Rappazzo, D. Lobdell, and J. Jagai. Aggregated Cumulative County Arsenic in Drinking Water and Associations with Bladder, Colorectal, and Kidney Cancers, Accounting for Population Served. Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology. Nature Publishing Group, London, UK, 31(6): 979-989, (2021).