Privacy Risks of Sharing Data from Environmental Health Studies.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Sharing research data uses resources effectively; enables large, diverse data sets; and supports rigor and reproducibility. However, sharing such data increases privacy risks for participants who may be re-identified by linking study data to outside data sets. These risks have been investigated for genetic and medical records but rarely for environmental data. OBJECTIVES:We evaluated how data in environmental health (EH) studies may be vulnerable to linkage and we investigated, in a case study, whether environmental measurements could contribute to inferring latent categories (e.g., geographic location), which increases privacy risks. METHODS:We identified 12 prominent EH studies, reviewed the data types collected, and evaluated the availability of outside data sets that overlap

SUBMITTER: Boronow KE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7015543 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature