Farmers spraying weed-killer run cancer risk—study

Press, 1 September 1986, Page 10

Farmers spraying weed-killer run cancer risk —study

NZPA-Reuter Chicago An American study has found that farmers exposed to herbicides while applying the poisons to croplands may run as much as a sixfold increased risk of one form of cancer, researchers say.

The herbicide to which the farmers in the study were most often exposed was 2,4-D, a broadleaf weed-killer sold worldwide and also used on home lawns and gardens. The compound is made by Dow Chemical Company and several other firms. "The study shows that for farmers, wearing protective equipment is very important, since it reduces exposure,” said

Sheila Hoar, a researcher at the National Cancer Institute which did the study.

The inquiry covered 424 men in Kansas, a main farming state, who had been diagnosed with various forms of cancer between 1976 and 1982, including a form of the disease called non-Hodg-kins lymphoma. They were compared with 948 other men drawn from the general population in Kansas.

It found a sixfold increase in that disease among farmers who were exposed to herbicides more than 20 days a year.

Researchers at the Cancer Institute and at the Diversity of Kansas said

the results confirmed an earlier study from Sweden, which also suggested an association between herbicide use and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. That type of cancer accounts for 3 per cent of all newly diagnosed cases of cancer in the United States, where it strikes about 27,200 people each year.

Ms Hoar said that about half of the farmers in the study with non-Hodgkins lymphoma had died before the research began.

Kansas was chosen for the study because it is a main wheat-growing state with a long history of herbicide use, and because it requires all cancer, .cases to be reported to health authorities.