Pesticides Killing Children
A small community of 14,000 people in Canada’s Prince Edward Island has experienced unusually high numbers of cancers in recent years, unusual cancers, particularly among children. A doctor who recently arrived there is concerned that the cause of these cancers may be pesticides which have been used for many years on local potato farms.
In short order after his arrival, he came across an osteosarcoma that led to the heart-wrenching death of a young girl, several lymphomas, an Ewing’s sarcoma, and a number of myeloid leukemia cases, all among children. Brain cancers weren’t sparing young and middle-aged adults either, with three of them last year.
Many studies, but not all, on the health of residents of farming areas have found associations between crop sprays and cancer. But this research, known as epidemiology or the tracking of disease incidence, is considered less conclusive than the medical evidence on such well-known carcinogens as cigarette smoke, asbestos fibres and radon gas.
Researchers think that about 80 to 90 per cent of all cancers are due to environmental causes broadly defined to include lifestyle factors such as smoking and diet. It’s far harder to tease out just how much is due to polluted air, water or food, or to radiation or workplace exposures to cancer-causing substances. One recent estimate of the impact of pollution placed the total cancers due to this factor at about 8 to 16 per cent.
Prince Edward Island would be a good place to shed more light on the health effects of agricultural chemicals because areas such as Kensington have some of the highest airborne concentrations of pesticides around farm fields in the world, and a sizable rural population literally living on the doorstep of the spraying.
It’s not the first time small farming communities have seen unusually high numbers of cancers. Although the true reason for these cancers will probably never be known, it doesn’t look good for these people.
Read the full story here.
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