A common misconception when identifying that an area, community, or suburb, has a higher rate of cancer than other areas is that there is a ‘cancer cluster’. As you can see from the Atlas, cancer rates vary a great deal from place to place. A true ’cancer cluster’ is rare and is said to occur when the number of people in a geographical area (or workplace, or some other group) who are diagnosed with a particular type of cancer is significantly higher than we would expect, given the actual background cancer rates.
Even though the average risk of being diagnosed with cancer (or been alive at five years of diagnosis) might be higher for people living in certain geographical areas, this is likely to be the result of the characteristics and behaviours of those people rather than exposure to something in these areas.
It is known that a third of cancers could be prevented by improving behaviours such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, poor diet, inadequate physical activity and sun protection. If a greater proportion of people within one community have these poor health behaviours, then that might be one explanation for the higher than average risk in that area.
If a true cancer cluster is still suspected after considering these types of factors, there are established procedures within each State and Territory Health Department to investigate these concerns.
There are extremely few cancer clusters around the world that have actually been confirmed after thorough investigations.
