Inside Iowa Politics: Iowa doctor/politician wants to know if pesticides cause rising cancer rates
Study found pesticides could increase risk similar to smoking
DES MOINES, Iowa (Gray Media Iowa State Capitol Bureau) - State Representative Austin Baeth, a Democrat from Des Moines and physician, wants state leaders to commit more resources to determining whether pesticide use is causing the cancer rate to increase.
Iowa has the nation’s second-highest rate of cancer, according to the Iowa Cancer Registry.
Agriculture has been a staple of Iowa’s economy for generations. The state is one of the country’s top producers of corn and soybeans. Producers of both groups typically use pesticides to fight weeds and disease.
Baeth’s newest concerns about Iowa’s cancer rates follow the release of a study published in the Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society. The study looked at regions of the country and found that heavy pesticide exposure could be similar to the cancer risks from exposure to smoking.
The study reported, “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.”
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