BY DOUG SCHNEIDER •DSCHNEID@GANNETT.COM • APRIL 21, 2010, 8:50 PM

New Yorkers in the future will have a new way to help them determine if certain types of cancer are prevalent in areas where they live and work.

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State senators Wednesday approved a measure that would require health officials to create maps of cancer cases across the state and make those maps available on the Internet. Officials hope the mapping will help them identify connections between cancers in specific locations, and environmental factors such as pollution.

“This information will be very, very helpful to identify types of cancer” within a geographic area, said state Sen. Thomas W. Libous, R-Binghamton. He is one of two sponsors of the measure, which adds the mapping requirement to a law adopted in 2008.

The proposal now goes to Gov. David Paterson for signature. Once signed, it would require preliminary maps to be posted by mid-2012, and updated maps in mid-2013.

Doctors will be required to fill out detailed reports for each cancer patient and submit that information to the state health department. That information will be fed into a database — updated periodically — used to create the maps. Patients would not be publicly identified.

Cancer “hot spots” — neighborhoods where the same types of cancers occur more often than typically would be expected — have become an issue in recent years in some Southern Tier communities.

Near Binghamton, cancer hot spots have been identified in Endicott and Hillcrest. The Endicott issue prompted lawsuits, the installation of basement-ventilation systems in more than 400 homes, and the construction of monitoring wells after vapor from a suspected carcinogen called trichloroethylene was detected underground near a former IBM plant on North Street and elsewhere in the village.

In Hillcrest, TCE was found in soil and groundwater samples taken from around a former military depot off Nowlan Road. Six children from that neighborhood were diagnosed with cancer in the 1990s.

In Elmira, New York and Chemung County health officials investigated a suspected cancer cluster among Southside High School students and alumni diagnosed with testicular cancer. The school was built in 1979 on property contaminated by more than a century of heavy industry. The probe concluded that the site posed no health risks.

The mapping project would help establish environmental links behind preponderances of certain cancers in an area, Libous said.

Libous said the data could help lawmakers direct funding for health or environmental initiatives that would benefit communities that have cancer issues. The project, however, will not include data from cancer deaths that occurred in the past.

The bill duplicates one approved earlier by the state Assembly, which was co-sponsored by Endwell Democrat Donna Lupardo.

Assistant Managing Editor Al Vieira contributed to this report.