New York Releases Statewide Cancer Maps

New York health officials say they’re one step closer to finding patterns in cancer rates across the state after the release of the first maps showing a county-by-county breakdown of the state’s three deadliest cancers.

The three maps, posted earlier this month on the state Health Department’s Web site, track the number of cases of breast, lung and colorectal cancers in each county from 1992 to 1996.

But several health advocates complained that the maps were more of a baby step than a leap toward the goal of uncovering cancer clusters and finding out why people in certain areas are more likely to become sick than those in others.

“This is the first in a series of maps that will give all New Yorkers a clear, concise picture of the incidence of cancer across the state,” said state Health Commissioner Dr. Antonia Novello. “But this is just an awareness map, so we can target prevention.”

But some state legislators and health advocates countered that the maps were just old information in a new format.

“This really didn’t tell anybody anything,” said Geri Barish, president of One in Nine, a Long Island breast cancer coalition.

Barish pointed out that the data used to compile the cancer maps has been available on the state Health Department’s Web site for several months and said she wished other factors, such as environmental pollutants being released into the atmosphere in various areas, would be worked into the map.

“Isn’t it easier to say what they already know?” Barish said. “What we want to know is that when you take away the socioeconomic factors, the gene factor, the hereditary factors, what do you have left? The environment. We want to know why we’re getting cancer.”

Novello countered that the state has already begun work on sub-county cancer maps that will give more detailed data on the cancer occurrences from 1993 to 1997. She said those maps will be released within a few months, and may help determine whether pollutants or other environmental factors are to blame for higher cancer rates.

The cancer maps were the subject of a political battle last year, when Gov. George Pataki vetoed a $1-million appropriation lawmakers included in the 1998-99 state budget to conduct the cancer-mapping project. The Republican governor later said health officials would scrape together the money from other sources and the program would go forward.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, who introduced the legislation in 1997 to create cancer cluster mapping, accused the Health Department of taking too long to release maps that he said were “insufficient and vague.”

“They’ve had the county numbers in tabular form for years,” said Brodsky, a Westchester County Democrat. “It’s not clear to a lot of people what they’re doing that took so long.”

Novello, a former U.S. surgeon general, sharply countered Brodsky’s remarks during a Dec. 9 news conference.

“I would appreciate that when politicians do not know how to do science, they stick to politics,” she said.

Moreover, Novello said it took months to make sure the cancer registry was accurate and to enter the data into the proper computer software for mapping. “All that takes time,” she said.

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New York state’s cancer maps can be found on the state Health Department Web site, www.health.state.ny.us.