Document EvExk7gm0N7YNJVRK8G5837Lg

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH. EDUCATION. AND WELFARE PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE CENTEH FOB DISEASE CONTNOL NATIONAL INSTITUTE PON OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH NONEAT A. TAFT LANONATONICS ANTE COLUMBIA PANKWAV. CINCINNATI. HI ASIAN February 9, 1981 David H. Glenn, M.D. Medical Director Onion Carbide Corp. Box 471 Texas City, Texas 77590 Dear Dr. Glenn: Enclosed are additional summaries of secular trends in brain tumor deaths which were prepared at the same time as the material you asked . about earlier. As you see, there has been a fairly steady increase in raw death rates for Harris and Galveston Counties. Hie increase is more marked for Galveston than for Harris Counties, that holds true even if Onion Carbide cases are excluded. Bates for Braxoria County are less stable, due to smaller numbers, and I think they would be strongly affected by the Dow cases. I must stress, these are not high quality statistics. *0x0 numerators are derived from a list of males 21 years of age and older who died in each county of malignant brain tumors. They do not include the significant proportion of cases coded as "brain timor - benign" and "brain tumor - unspecified" due to poor phrasing of death certificate diagnoses. The lists were generated by M.D. Anderson from Texas Bureau of Vital Statistics data and are good, but hardly perfect. Denominators arc for a whole population with siy own interpolation not the Census Bureau's. Bates are thus not age adjusted nor are they comparable to other atandard rates. The fact that recent death rates for brain tumor provided by the Texas Bureau of Vital Statistics show that Galveston County brain tumor rates are comparable to the nation as a whole deepens the mystery. ucc 053325 Page 2 - Dr. David Glenn Parenthetically, since this was done before we appreciated the problem with 'torain tumor - unspecified," the difference made by excluding Union Carbide cases may be less than shown for a few of the years* Sincerely yours, j/Z-y -SenffrrdS. Leffingwetl, M.D. Medical Officer Industry-wide Studies Branch Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations and Field Studies Enclosures cc: Michael Utidjian, M.D. Victor Alexander, M.D. Susan Austin, Fh.D. Rick tfaxweiler, Ph.D. ucc 053326