The Link Between Cancer & Pesticides

By Cliff Walsh


The U.S. agricultural market and chemical industry sells just under a billion pounds of insecticides and herbicides each year. The government allows this to happen despite knowing that farmers and those that apply pesticides, as well as factory workers at pesticide plants get cancer at significantly higher rates than those that do not work on farms or in chemical plants. Very little effort has been made, to date, by the government in order to get to the bottom of this crisis. Pesticides can also be found in our water.

Farmers use insecticides and herbicides to rid crops of bugs, harmful plants, germs, and smaller animals. Is it hard to believe that the same pesticides that can kill bugs, small animals, and bacteria can also kill cells in the human body? Studies have shown that these chemicals can change our DNA, which can unleash the spread of carcinogenic cells.

What's more, these pesticides often remain in our bodies for years, due to the fact that the majority of them are fat soluble. I can attest to this as I remember vividly suffering from headaches for about two weeks when I cut pesticides out of my diet and began eating a vegan diet of mainly organic fruits and vegetables.

Although the government doesn't appear to be making any effort to understand this causation, much research has been done privately. The evidence clearly shows a distinct link between cancer and insecticides and herbicides. A research project done in the U.S., which tested over 55,000 farm workers for skin cancer, showed that those who applied the most pesticides over their careers had the highest rates of cancer. Those is the top group were more than 2.5x as likely to get skin cancer than the bottom group.

The Ministry of Health in Argentina also recently released a report highlighting a massive dichotomy of cancer rates across its provinces, linking the higher rates to increased usage of chemical pesticides. In some areas, cancer rates were more than double that of the areas with lowest chemical usage. Argentina is a useful comparison for the U.S. because together both countries produce roughly 70% of all genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), which require heavy pesticide use.

Other research has shows links to a host of other cancers, including brain, breast, prostate, lung, and bladder cancer, as well as leukemia and lymphoma.

I put little faith in the claims made by these chemical companies when they say their products don't harm us and that they are doing a public service by boosting food output. Without these pesticides, according to pesticide industry execs, we would all be starving right now. I find that hard to believe, particularly when remembering that a variety of previous industry products have been removed from the shelves because they were deemed carcinogenic, like DDT and PCBs.

Eat organic fruits and vegetables, at least those without hard shells or thick protective skins. While I don't recommend it, if you stick with foods doused with pesticides, wash and/or peel the skin. I also suggest you get a water filter for your drinking water.




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