Ambient air exposures to arsenic and cadmium and overall and prostate cancer-specific survival among prostate cancer cases in Pennsylvania, 2004 to 2014.

Arsenic and cadmium exposures linked to increased prostate cancer deaths remain unclear. We investigated whether air levels of arsenic and cadmium reported to be released from industries decrease overall and prostate cancer-specific survival among prostate cancer cases identified in the 2004 to 2014 Pennsylvania Cancer Registry. Among the 78,914 prostate cancer cases, increasing air levels of arsenic and cadmium are found to be associated with lower overall and prostate cancer-specific survival for the total population and within rural and urban Appalachia and urban non-Appalachia counties in Pennsylvania. Reducing exposures to arsenic and cadmium have the potential to decrease prostate cancer deaths.