Cancer incidence trends in white women of the San Francisco Bay Area.

The 10% increase in the incidence of all cancer observed in the total white population of the San Francisco Bay Area during 1970-75 is mostly due to the 19% increase in cancer among white females. The latter is largely a result of increased incidence of cancer of the corpus uteri, breast, and lung, and of malignant melanoma. Cancer of these four sites constitutes 85% of the increase in white women. The rise in uterine corpus cancer is limited to women over 50 years of age. An incidence peak in 1974 of breast cancer was followed by a substantial decrease in 1975. The 50% rise in female lung cancer is an extension of the increase that began in 1965. The almost 70% increase in melanoma among women since 1975 accompanies a comparable increase in melanoma among males after a decade of stable incidence rates.