Study Reveals Pesticides’ Cancer Risk Rivals That of Smoking

Researchers evaluated the effects of common agricultural pesticides on cancer rates, discovering that the use of these pesticides is linked to a higher risk of cancer.

In contemporary agriculture, pesticides are crucial for maintaining high crop yields and ensuring food security. However, these chemicals can negatively impact plant and animal life, as well as pose risks to human health.

Now, in a population-based, nationwide 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.

Contextualizing cancer risk

“We accept that a person who is not a farmer living in a community with heavy agricultural production is exposed to many of the pesticides used in their vicinity. It becomes part of their environment,” Zapata said.

The researchers found that in such an environment, the impact of pesticide use on cancer incidence rivaled that of smoking. The strongest association was among non-Hodgkins lymphoma, leukemia, and bladder cancer. In these types of cancers, the effects of pesticide exposure were more pronounced than the effects of smoking.

“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,” Zapata pointed out.

Pesticide cocktails

Because pesticides aren’t used one at a time, the researchers said it is unlikely that one alone is to blame. Although some pesticides are discussed more frequently than others, all – and mostly their combination – can have an impact. Accordingly, the researchers included 69 pesticides for which use data is available via the United States Geological Survey. “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,” Zapata said.