Possible links of wildfires with oncological diseases of children and adults in the Russian Far East

Abstract

Russian Federal Far East District is a continental scale area where wildfires are frequent. We aimed to a) determine whether wildfires are related statistically to cancer for children and adults in the Russian Federal Far East District (FFED); b) to estimate time lags of such relationships and c) to find out which age groups are most vulnerable for wildfires. Annual number of fires (NF) in administrative units (AUs), normalized to the maximum value for all AUs in observation period 1992–2019, was taken as a characteristic of wildfires in our analysis. Annual cancer incidence (CI) for five cancer types for children up to 14 years and the entire population, normalized similarly to NF, was compared to normalized NF. ARIMA models were used for time series analysis for the period 1992–2019. Linear statistical analysis was done for NF and CI for short time series (10–12 years) for the central AU of FFED for “children up to 4 years”; Three additional embryonal types of cancer and five benign types of tumors were also focused in linear statistical analysis. ARIMA analysis revealed 27 associations between NF and CI with a lag from 0 to 3 years for two age groups, and five cancer types (p-values between 0.002 and 0.1). Linear statistical analysis for “children up to 4 years” revealed correlations for two from three embryonal types of cancer and three from five benign tumors (0.002 < p < 0.046). Incidences of hematopoietic, lymphoid, vascular, and soft tissue neoplasms, as well as CNS tumors had associations with wildfires for “children up to 4 years”, for “children up to 14 years” and “the entire population” age groups in many cases. Entire population and children up to 4 years in the central AU of FFED are most sensitive to wildfire — cancer interactions. Associations “number of fires — cancer incidence” as a rule have time lags from 0 to 3 years.