Cancer incidence in European migrants to New South Wales

Abstract

The incidence of cancer in migrants to New South Wales (NSW) from Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and USSR has been compared with that in the Australian-born population using data from the NSW Central Cancer Registry for 1972–84. The indirectly age-standardized incidence ratios (SIR) in all seven countries were low for melanoma of skin and high for gastric cancer. Cancers of the colon, oesophagus and lip also tended to have low SIRs. Migrants from Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia had significantly less cancer at all sites than the native-born Australians mainly due to low SIRs for cancers of colon, lung (except Yugoslavian-born men), prostate and, in men, ‘head and neck’ (excluding nasopharynx). Cancers of breast and testis were relatively less common in migrants from Italy and Yugoslavia. SIRs were high for cancers of bladder (in Italian-born men), liver (in Greek- and Yugoslavian-born men) and nasopharynx (in Greek-born men and Italian-born men and women). Amongst migrants from the four more northerly European countries, ovarian cancer was relatively more common in women from Germany and Poland as was bladder cancer in men, but not women, from Germany and the Netherlands. Cancers which had significantly increased SIRs in one migrant group only were lung (Dutch-born men), cervix uteri and body of uterus (German-born women), gallbladder and bile ducts (Polish-born women), thyroid (Italian-born women), connective and other soft tissue (Russian-born men) and brain (Greek-born men and women computed together). Lymphomas were relatively less common in men born in Yugoslavia.