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One in 8 men in the United States have cancer linked to 22 pesticides.
Nearly two dozen of the most common pesticides used in the US are linked to prostate cancer, a study warns. Researchers at Stanford University looked at exposure to 295 different types of chemicals across the country between 1997 and 2006. Since this cancer takes time to develop, the team looked at cancer rates from 2011-2020 to see if areas with high pesticide use also had higher rates of the deadly disease. Read further to know in detail.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States.
A new study has shown that exposure to any of 22 pesticides identified may increase the risk of prostate cancer in men. The decades-long research, because prostate cancer grows very slowly, was conducted by Stanford University, California.
Researchers led by Dr. Simon John Christoph Sorensen studied US data in detail on county-level use of nearly 300 pesticides, and they compared those results to prostate cancer rates in counties across the United States.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. Experts say that it grows slowly, and if it does not spread to other parts of the body, this cancer may not cause serious problems. However, it can sometimes grow and spread rapidly, which is more serious.
Soerensen’s group looked at pesticide-use data from 1997 to 2001, taking into account the ten- to 18-year lag between exposure to the carcinogen and the time it took for prostate cancer to develop. After that, they compared the data to prostate cancer rates from 2016 to 2020.
2-4-D is one of the pesticides that causes prostate cancer
The researchers concluded that overall, 22 pesticides were linked to an increased risk of prostate cancer, although the study could not prove cause-and-effect. Three pesticides have already been linked to cancer, including 2-4-D, a commonly used pesticide in the United States.
Of the other 19 pesticides, 10 were herbicides, while others included fungicides and insecticides, as well as soil fumes, the researchers reported in the study published in the journal Nature. cancerHigher exposure to four pesticides was linked to the development of prostate cancer and death from the disease.
The Stanford team said those chemicals included trifluralin, chloransulam-methyl, and diflufenazopyr, plus an insecticide, thiamethoxam. The team reported that of those four, only trifluralin is currently classified as a “probable human carcinogen” by the Environmental Protection Agency. The other three have been designated by the EPA as “not likely to be carcinogenic” or with evidence of “non-carcinogenicity”.
“This research shows the importance of studying environmental exposures, such as pesticide use, to potentially explain some of the geographic variations seen in prostate cancer incidence and deaths across the United States,” said Sorensen, a graduate student in epidemiology at Stanford. Is.” A Journal News Release.
“Based on these findings, we can advance our efforts to pinpoint risk factors for prostate cancer and work toward reducing the number of men affected by this disease.”
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