If the population total of the Acreage was 45,000 would the cancer cluster designation still be attached to the community?
The increased rate of brain cancers were found among children ages 0-19 in the Acreage. Therefore, it is not so much the total population number that matters in this calculation, but the number of children in the Acreage which is important since the increase was noted among children. You would expect less than one case per year in a population of children the size of the Acreage. We did not do theoretical estimates of how big the population of children would need to be so that four in one year or 4-5 in a three year period is not considered more than expected. Should we see a greater significance to the increases shown in our local results if we used local comparisons relative to statewide data particularly if Palm Beach rates were higher than the state rates? The DOH study compared rates in the Acreage to both Palm Beach County rates and to state rates. The differences we found in the “Standardized Incidence Ratio” SIR’s (ratio of observed versus expected) showed little change whether
