Castaño Vinyals, GemmaCantor, Kenneth PVillanueva Belmonte, CristinaTardón, AdoninaGarcía Closas, ReinaSerra, ConsolCarrato, AlfredoMalats i Riera, NúriaRothman, NathanielSilverman, Debra T.Kogevinas, Manolis2014-12-222014-12-222011Castaño-Vinyals G, Cantor KP, Villanueva CM, Tardon A, Garcia-Closas R, Serra C et al. Socioeconomic status and exposure to disinfection by-products in drinking water in Spain. Environ Health. 2011 Mar;10:18. DOI: 10.1186/1476-069X-10-181476-069Xhttp://hdl.handle.net/10230/23031Background: Disinfection by-products in drinking water are chemical contaminants that have been associated with cancer and other adverse effects. Exposure occurs from consumption of tap water, inhalation and dermal absorption. Methods: We determined the relationship between socioeconomic status and exposure to disinfection by-products in 1271 controls from a multicentric bladder cancer case-control study in Spain. Information on lifetime drinking water sources, swimming pool attendance, showering-bathing practices, and socioeconomic status (education, income) was collected through personal interviews. Results: The most highly educated subjects consumed less tap water (57%) and more bottled water (33%) than illiterate subjects (69% and 17% respectively, p-value = 0.003). These differences became wider in recent time periods. The time spent bathing or showering was positively correlated with attained educational level (p < 0.001). Swimming pool attendance was more frequent among highly educated subjects compared to the illiterate (odds ratio = 3.4; 95% confidence interval 1.6-7.3)./n/nConclusions: The most highly educated subjects were less exposed to chlorination by-products through ingestion but more exposed through dermal contact and inhalation in pools and showers/baths. Health risk perceptions and economic capacity may affect patterns of water consumption that can result in differences in exposure to water contaminants.application/pdfeng© 2011 Castaño-Vinyals et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. /nThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.AiguaCàncerContaminacióConsuminfo:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-069X-10-18info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess