Pesticide Use Increases Cancer Rates of Those Nearby — Study

A recent study has found that living near farms that spray harmful chemical pesticides increases cancer rates.

“Our findings demonstrated an association between pesticide use and increased incidence of leukemia; non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma; bladder, colon, lung, and pancreatic cancer; and all cancers combined that are comparable to smoking for some cancer types,” the study said in the ‘Abstract’ section.

The chemicals used to kill pests also affect humans as well, however pesticide use can boost agricultural output by 15 to 50 percent, increasing money flows, according to the study in the ‘Introduction’ section.

Another thing that gets the money flowing aside from increased agricultural production is cancer treatment. Conveniently pesticide use aids not only in the increase of crop yields but also the increase of cancer treatments as well.

“…exposure to pesticides has been associated with numerous harmful health effects, including neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, increased risk for various cancers, and altered immune function,” the study said in the ‘Introduction’ section.

Although much work has been conducted on confirming the link between direct pesticide exposure and cancer, little work had been done on the exposure risk to the surrounding community, until now.

“Overall, a comprehensive assessment of cancer risk from a public and a population health perspective in the United States is non-existent. Our study aims to fill in that gap,” the study said in the ‘Introduction’ section.

The researchers looked at the geographic spread of pesticide use and corresponding geographical spread of cancer cases from 3,143 counties.

“To achieve this, we first matched all databases using county Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) codes. Then we developed agricultural pesticide use pattern profiles using an LCA approach to pesticide use alone. After that, we performed a comprehensive analysis to determine the effect of agricultural pesticide use patterns and covariates on cancer incidence,” the study said in the ‘Methods’ section.

Smoking was found to be just as safe as living near pesticide use.

“Pesticides have a significant effect on increasing cancer risk for all the cancer types evaluated, however, in a way that is only matched by smoking prevalence,” the study said in the ‘Results’ section.

“…we produced national maps that represent the contrast of regions with the pesticide use associated with higher added cancer risk using the lowest region as a reference. In these maps, we highlight shocking estimates of additional cancer cases per year adjusted to the total population of the United States,” the study said in the ‘Results’ section.

Interestingly, the spread of various cancers was different for different regions.

Some crops have been genetically modified to produce pesticide within the food itself, while others have been genetically modified in order to not die when herbicides are sprayed on them. Notably, humans have not undergone those genetic modifications in order to not die when sprayed with those chemicals.

Source: Pesticide Use Increases Cancer Rates of Those Nearby — Study