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Ahmadi, Mohadeseh

University of British Columbia

Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. Some established risk factors for breast cancer include obesity, physical activity, food choices, smoking, and alcohol use. With increasing rates of urbanization, there might be certain built environment features, such as traffic-related air pollution (TRAP), greenness, and walkability, that influence breast cancer risk. Objective: To assess the impact of TRAP on the risk of post-menopausal breast cancer by utilizing incident breast cancer data from Alberta’s Tomorrow Project (ATP) cohort linked to geographic datasets from the Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research (CANUE). This study will also assess the impact of the built environment factors on the risk breast cancer. Method: This study entailed a secondary analysis of baseline data from the ATP. Cox proportional hazard regression was used to build four models to assess the association between breast cancer risk and built environment factors. Results: The study included 15,536 participants and 523 incident breast cancer cases. The HR estimate for a 10 ppb increase in NO2 measured at baseline (the year participant completed the UHLQ or CORE survey) was 1.10 (95% CI = 0.90, 1.34). For walkability, the adjusted HRs for quintile 2 through 5, in relation to quintile 1, were 1.07 (95% CI = 0.80-1.44), 1.39 (1.05-1.83), 1.49 (1.13-1.97), and 1.22 (0.90-1.66), respectively. Q1 corresponded to least walkable neighbourhoods and Q5 corresponded to most walkable neighbourhoods. The HR estimate for an interquartile range increase in baseline greenness for this model was 1.05 (95% CI = 0.94, 1.16). For greenness measured within 1000 meters, the HR estimate for an IQR increase was 0.97 (95% CI = 0.88, 1.07). Discussion: We found non-significant associations between NO₂ exposure and post-menopausal breast cancer. For walkability, the least walkable areas had the lowest breast cancer rate, and the most walkable areas corresponded to greater breast cancer risk. Further, higher baseline greenness resulted in greater breast cancer risk, whereas increased greenness within 1000 meters was associated with reduced risk. While the association between NO2 and breast cancer risk has been reasonably studied, research on the association between greenness and walkability, and breast cancer risk is limited.

Text

2024-04-29

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88089

Population and Public Health

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/