Background: The initiation of environmental public health tracking systems in the United States
and the United Kingdom provided an opportunity to advance techniques and tools available for
spatial epidemiological analysis integrating both health and environmental data.
Objective: The Rapid Inquiry Facility (RIF) allows users to calculate adjusted and unadjusted standardized
rates and risks. The RIF is embedded in ArcGIS so that further geographical information
system (GIS) spatial functionality can be exploited or results can be exported to statistical packages
for further tailored analyses where required. The RIF also links directly to several statistical packages
and displays the results in the GIS.
Methods: The value of the RIF is illustrated here with two case studies: risk of leukemia in areas
surrounding oil refineries in the State of Utah (USA) and an analysis of the geographical variation
of risk of esophageal cancer in relation to zinc cadmium sulfide exposure in Norwich (United
Kingdom).
Results: The risk analysis study in Utah did not suggest any evidence of increased relative risk
of leukemia, multiple myeloma, or Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the populations around the five oilrefining
facilities but did reveal an excess risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that might warrant
further investigation. The disease-mapping study in Norwich did not reveal any areas with higher
relative risks of esophageal cancer common to both males and females, suggesting that a common
geographically determined exposure was unlikely to be influencing cancer risk in the area.
Conclusion: The RIF offers a tool that allows epidemiologists to quickly carry out ecological environmental
epidemiological analysis such as risk assessment or disease mapping.