02/08/2024
A new study has found that pesticides may increase the risk of cancer more than smoking. More research is clearly needed but this could be a major source of disease in our society, that is largely ignored by the health system.
Professor Zapata and collaborators found that simply living near farms was enough to increase a person’s risk of cancers and in some cases, that increased cancer risk surpassed cancers caused by smoking. The strongest cancer risks were for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, leukaemia, and bladder cancer. Most disturbing was the finding that cancer risks due to pesticide exposures were actually higher for these particular forms of cancer than due to the risks from smoking.
Are one or two pesticides more dangerous than all the others?
“We present a list of major pesticide contributors for some specific cancers, but we highlight strongly that it is the combination of all of them and not just a single one that matters,” Professor Zapata explained. This list names 69 different agricultural pesticides for which use data are publicly available from the United States Geological Survey.
But these pesticides aren’t used used at a time. Instead, they are applied as pesticide “cocktails”, and thus, it is unlikely that just one or a few are to blame.
“In the real world, it is not likely that people are exposed to a single pesticide, but more to a cocktail of pesticides within their region,” Professor Zapata cautioned.
This study is the first comprehensive examination of cancer risks due to pesticide exposures with a population-based perspective at a national level, according to Professor Zapata and collaborators. Further, this is the first time that cancer risks due to pesticide exposures have been placed into a context with a cancer risk factor that is no longer questioned, in this case smoking.
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https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cancer-control-and-society/articles/10.3389/fcacs.2024.1368086/full
Pesticides are an essential feature of modern-day agriculture that adds to the list of factors that increase cancer risk. Our study aims to comprehensively e...