Pesticides Potentially As Bad As Smoking for Increased Risk in Certain Cancers

Pesticides have long been established as potentially health damaging, with some of them linked to cancer. In a populational US-wide study that considered not only farmers who actively use pesticides but communities as a whole, researchers contextualized cancer risk associated with pesticide use and smoking. They found that living in an environment heavily exposed to pesticides could increase the incidence of cancer as much as smoking.

In modern day agriculture, pesticides are essential to ensure high enough crop yields and food security. These chemicals, however, can adversely affect plant and animal life as well as the people exposed to them.

Now, in a population-based, nation-wide study, researchers in the US have put increased cancer risk through agricultural pesticide use into context with smoking, a better understood cancer risk factor. The results were published in Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society.

“In our study we found that for some cancers, the effect of agricultural pesticide usage is comparable in magnitude to the effect of smoking,” said the study’s senior author, Dr Isain Zapata, associate professor at the Rocky Vista University, College of Osteopathic Medicine in Colorado.