A Spatial Analysis of Mining Activity and Cancer in Montana Counties

Introduction The mining industry is responsible for several detrimental effects on health and the environment through the mining process itself as well as through pollution. Although there is a wide range of health impacts associated with mining depending on the mineral and mining type, dust is common to all types of mine processes, and respiratory effects, especially for workers, are among the most serious and most widely researched. Most studies on mining and health have focused on mineworkers with relatively fewer studies on health effects on general members of the population living in the vicinity of mines because of the difficulty in undertaking adequate studies to assess possible relationships and the uncertainty and controversy that still remains among different interest groups over the actual existence of community effects on health. Spatial analysis would provide a simpler way of approaching a community-level assessment of mining’s health impacts in the absence of studies on individuals. Furthermore, since geologic features—such as soil type and mineral deposits—with similar characteristics are not randomly distributed in space but tend to be situated together, there may also be a spatial component to potential health effects resulting from mining. Because of the prevalence of respiratory problems involved in the mining industry, this study focuses specifically on lung cancer as a potential health problem related to mining in order to determine if there are spatial differences in disease rates in areas with different levels of mining activity. Additionally, cancer is a significant illness because it can surface much later after exposure, and there is still a lack of sufficient information on long-term as opposed to more direct respiratory illnesses related to mining. In this study, the spatial examination of the relationship between lung cancer and the location of mines will be applied to the state of Montana because of its history as a mining state and the readily available spatial data for its mining operations.