Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Roca Honda Mine

Chapter 3. Affected Environment and Environmental Consequences
Cibola County McKinley County New Mexico
Motor vehicle crash (2005-2009) 2.9 NA 1.4**
Suicide 2.8 2.3 1.9
Source: NMDH, 2011a
Notes: *Includes all cases of death where diabetes mellitus was an underlying condition; **These data are from 2007.
In Cibola and McKinley County, the top three causes of cancer are breast cancer for women,
prostate cancer for men, followed by lung cancer and colorectal cancer for both sexes. These
overall trends mirror those observed for the State of New Mexico and the U.S. as a whole.
Overall cancer incidence and mortality rates and counts of cancer cases and deaths between 1995
and 2004 are presented in table 77.
Table 77. Incidence and mortality rates and counts of cancer cases and deaths in Cibola
and McKinley Counties, 1995-2004
Cancer Incidence
(per 10,000
population)
Number of
New Cases
Cancer Mortality
(per 10,000
population)
Number of
Cancer
Deaths
Cibola County 38.23 888 16.57 367
McKinley County 31.13 1,487 16.72 732
New Mexico
Source: NMDH, 2007
41.50 71,164 17.21 28,734
In the State of New Mexico, the tumor registry reports on rates of cancer incidence and mortality
by three different racial cohorts. In Cibola and McKinley Counties cancer incidence and mortality
rates are lowest in the American Indian cohort, highest among the non-Hispanic White cohort and
rates for the Hispanic cohort fall in between the two. Although rates of cancer are lowest in
American Indian cohort compared to the other racial cohorts, cancer is the leading cause of death
among American Indians in New Mexico (NMDH, 2005).
Table 78 shows incidence rates of lung and bronchus cancer for Cibola and McKinley Counties
for the years 2006–2008. It is estimated that smoking causes 85–90 percent of all lung cancer in
the U.S. every year. Other agents known to contribute to or cause lung cancer are radon gas,
airborne asbestos and high-dose ionizing radon (NMDH, 2005). For the proposed action
alternative, the association between radon exposure and lung cancer (USEPA, 2011a) is of
particular importance.
DEIS for Roca Honda Mine, Cibola National Forest 383