"People who don’t farm, but live in US agricultural communities where pesticides are used on farms, face an increased cancer risk as significant as if they were smokers, according to a new study.

The study, published July 25 in the journal Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society, analyzed cancer incidence data from nearly every US county and looked at how that data corresponded to federal data on agricultural pesticide use. Researchers reported that they found the higher the pesticide use, the higher the risk for every type of cancer the researchers looked at.

“Agricultural pesticide usage has a significant impact on all the cancer types evaluated in this study (all cancers, bladder cancer, colon cancer, leukemia, lung cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and pancreatic cancer); and these associations are more evident in regions with heavy agricultural productivity,” the study states.

“Pesticide-associated cancers appear to be on par for several smoking-associated cancer types,” the study states. It has been well established that smoking increases cancer risk, with at least 70 of the thousands of chemicals in tobacco smoke considered carcinogens."

Shannon Kelleher reports for The New Lede July 25, 2024. [2]