Kidney Cancer Risk Associated with Historic Groundwater Trichloroethylene Contamination

Trichloroethylene (TCE) is a well-documented kidney carcinogen based on a substantial body of evidence including mechanistic and animal studies, as well as reports from occupational settings. However, the cancer risks for those in residential exposures such as TCE contamination in groundwater are much less clear. The objective of this study was to perform a detailed spatio-temporal analysis of estimated residential TCE exposure in New Hampshire, US. We identified kidney cancer cases ( n = 292) and age-, gender-matched controls ( n = 448) from the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health System and queried a commercial financial database for address histories. We used publically available data on TCE levels in groundwater measured at contaminated sites in New Hampshire and then modeled the spatial dispersion and temporal decay. We overlaid geospatial residential locations of cases and controls with yearly maps of estimated TCE levels to estimate median exposures over the 5, 10, and 15-year epochs before diagnosis. The 50th–75th percentile of estimated residential exposure over a 15-year period was associated with increased kidney cancer risk (adjusted Odds Ratio (OR) 1.78 95% CI 1.05–3.03), compared to <50th percentile. This finding supports the need for groundwater monitoring of TCE contaminated sites to identify potential public health risks.