United States: According to a new study finding, pesticides might lead to cancer, on par with cigarettes.
As per the study published on Thursday in Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society, the large-scale use of pesticides causes hundreds of thousands more cancer cases in most of the corn-producing states such as Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Ohio, affecting even those Americans who do not work in the fields.
More about the study
According to scientists and public health professionals, the association between pesticides and cancer has long been established through research, as the Hills reported.
However, in February, a team of scientists from the Endocrine Society and the International Pollutants Elimination Network worked on the issue. They raised alarms about the severely unsafe levels at which the pesticides are used and bringing harm.
The scientists explained the types of cancers that are directly caused by insect-killing chemicals, such as lung cancer, colon cancer, blood cancer, and pancreatic cancer in both children and adults alike.
More about the pesticides
A particular type of pesticide, glyphosate, is popularly known by its trade name Roundup, which the World Health Organization (WHO) classified as a potent cancer-causing agent. The groups of farmworkers and public health campaigners for federal public health officials have been moving to ban this product.
Apart from glyphosate, several other pesticides have a link to forming cancer.
In the latest research, the Frontiers authors have emphasized the importance of having a focused approach by working on particular pesticides, regions, or cohorts of the population (such as farm workers). This obscures the fact that pesticides are used across the country and that those exposed to any of them tend to be exposed to many of them, creating a greater compound risk.
According to the coauthor Isain Zapata of Rocky Vista University, “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,” as the Hills reported.
Researchers pointed out “publication bias”
Moreover, the researchers cautioned about a “publication bias” in certain cases as researchers focus more on well-known or controversial pesticides as compared to the expense of less well-known ones that could be equally damaging.
They noted, “We cannot assume that less published associations for a particular pesticide and cancer imply these do not exist.”
Cancer cases due to pesticides
The researchers analyzed that there is a difference of 154,000 cancer cases per year, wrt population, and between the area with the lowest pesticide use such as the Great Plains, as compared to the highest use such as the corn belt of the inner Midwest, place where the hundreds of millions of pounds of glyphosate are utilized every year across millions of acres of Roundup Ready corn.
On an individual level, pesticides cause a major trigger in causing blood cancers such as leukemia or non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
The researchers mentioned that half of the cases have to be “caused by pesticides compared to smoking,” as the Hill reported.