Cancer Risk From Pesticides Comparable To Smoking For Some Cancers
Food security comes with a steep price: the strongest associations between pesticides and cancer was for non-Hodgkinβs lymphoma, leukemia, and bladder cancer.
Β© by GrrlScientist for Forbes | LinkTr.ee
Modern agriculture currently feeds the burgeoning human population mainly because of the widespread use of pesticides. Although these chemicals appear to be miracles for agriculture and food security, pesticide exposure harms the health of plants, animals and humans, according to an alarming, but not especially surprising, new study (ref). This study compared the increased risk of cancers due to pesticide exposure to smoking, a noxious habit that is associated with a much better understood cancer risk.
βIn our study we found that for some cancers, the effect of agricultural pesticide usage is comparable in magnitude to the effect of smoking,β said the studyβs senior author, Isain Zapata, an Assistant Professor of Research and Statistics at Rocky Vista University, a private for-profit medical school in Colorado.
Unfortunately, farmers and farm workers are not the only groups faced with this increased risk of cancers. People who live downwind or nearby are also at risk.
