About Maine Tracking Program

What to know

The Maine (ME) Tracking Program provides web-based data and measures to improve public health in Maine.

Background

Maine has the 7th oldest housing stock in the nation with 36% of homes built before 1950. Almost all (90%) of childhood lead poisoning cases in Maine occur in homes built before 1950.

While more than half of Maine homes rely on private wells for drinking water, only 48% of those homes have tested the water for arsenic. 10% of private wells that were tested for arsenic had results above the health guideline (10 ppb).

The number of new cases of tickborne diseases in Maine has increased dramatically over the past two decades. Lyme disease is one of the most reported infectious diseases in Maine.

Accomplishments

Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention

In Maine, ingesting dust from lead paint is the most common way children are poisoned by lead. The Maine Tracking Program launched a mapping tool in 2018 to enhance users' abilities to visualize and explore lead poisoning, screening, and risk factor data. Community partners can use these data to help identify and monitor high-risk areas for childhood lead poisoning and target and evaluate community-based prevention initiatives.

Drinking Water from Private Wells

Many private wells in Maine have levels of arsenic, uranium, or other chemicals. These can cause serious health effects such as cancer or low birth weight. Maine's Tracking site displays private well water data including town-level measures for six potentially hazardous substances, testing behavior, and well-water reliance by housing status. While everyone who gets drinking water from a private well should regularly test the water, these data highlight areas where residents may be at higher risk for exposure to harmful chemicals.

Tickborne Diseases

All Maine residents and visitors are potentially at risk for diseases from the bite of infected deer ticks. These diseases include Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, and babesiosis. ME Tracking Program site hosts data for all three of these tick-borne diseases. Available data include incidence rates for all three tickborne diseases, prevalence rates of Lyme disease, and maps showing where deer ticks have been found.

Unique Data

All state and local tracking programs collect and display a set of standard data. But individual programs may host other data that are important to their populations. Maine Tracking's unique data include the following.

Town-level Data

The ME Tracking Program hosts town-level data and measures for Maine's 500+ towns in the following public health topic areas.

Near Real-time Data

The ME Tracking Program has a near real-time data dashboard that provides the following.

  • Daily tickborne disease case counts
  • Weekly tick-related emergency department visit numbers
  • Preliminary totals from the previous calendar year

Contacts

Website: https://data.mainepublichealth.gov/tracking/

Email: metracking@maine.gov

Resources and tools

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Content Source:
National Center for Environmental Health