AUGUSTA – Maine is taking part in a four-year study funded by the National Cancer Institute that will try to determine why the Northeast has a high mortality rate from bladder cancer.

From 1994 to 1998, Delaware had the highest mortality rate from the disease, at 4.5 deaths per 100,000 population. Maine was second at 4.3 per 100,000, followed by New Hampshire at 4.1 per 100,000.

Hawaii had the lowest rate among the 50 states, with 1.7 deaths per 100,000.

The study is being conducted in conjunction with state health departments, including Maine’s, Dartmouth Medical School, and a private research corporation, Westat of Rockville, Md., study officials told the Kennebec Journal in Augusta.

“Maine residents are dying from bladder cancer at a rate that is much higher than in the rest of the country. This four-year study will help to identify the reasons for this unacceptable disparity,” the Maine Department of Human Services’ Bureau of Health wrote in its budget request to hire a new employee to help with the study.

Researchers don’t want to detail suspected causes of the cancer because they want to avoid influencing people who will be questioned as part of the study, said Betsy Duane of the National Cancer Institute’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics in Bethesda, Md.

“If people get too informed when they go to answer our questionnaire, they might not be answering truthfully because they want to help … so we leave things purposefully vague so we don’t bias things,” Duane said.

The National Cancer Institute has suggested environmental factors in northern New England, such as smoking, water quality, diet and occupational exposures, may play a part in the elevated rates of bladder cancer.

“One of the things we’re looking at is ground water and that certainly would be environmental,” Duane said. “But nobody’s assuming anything.”

Areas with high incidents of different cancers can sometimes lead researchers to their causes, explained Dr. Margaret Parsons, director of the Maine Cancer Registry.

“The National Cancer Institute for a number of years has been plotting cancer trends geographically to try and see if geography can give us some clues.”

Dr. Dora Anne Mills, director of the Maine Bureau of Health, said high levels of arsenic known to be in Maine well water is a prime suspect in the bladder cancer study.

“Exposure to arsenic has been shown to be related to bladder cancer in other parts of the world and we want to see if that is true here as well,” she said.