The use of pesticides and its relationship with the increase in certain pathologies has been in the spotlight for years. Different studies have linked these pest control products with a greater risk of cancer or fetal death and their role in advancing puberty in children. Along these lines, researchers from the Department of Urology at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified in a study 22 pesticides that are consistently associated with the incidence of prostate cancer in the United States. Four of them are also linked to mortality from this type of tumor. The results have been published in ‘Cancer’, the journal of the American Cancer Society.
To evaluate the associations of 295 pesticides with prostate cancer in all counties in the United States, researchers conducted a setting-wide relationship study, using a spread between exposure and prostate cancer incidence. 10 to 18 years, taking into account that most prostate tumors grow slowly. The years 1997-2001 were evaluated for pesticide use and 2011-2015 for prostate cancer outcomes. Similarly, the years 2002-2006 were analyzed for pesticide use and 2016-2020 for results.
Among the 22 pesticides that showed consistent direct associations with prostate cancer incidence in both analyses, there were three that had already been linked to prostate cancer, including 2,4-Done of the most widely used in the U.S. The 19 candidate pesticides not previously linked to prostate cancer included 10 herbicides, several fungicides and insecticides, and a soil fumigant.
Four pesticides that were associated with prostate cancer incidence were also associated with prostate cancer mortality: three herbicides (trifluralin, chloransulam-methyl and diflufenzopyr) and an insecticide (thiamethoxam). The Environmental Protection Agency only classifies trifluralin as a “possible human carcinogen,” while the other three are considered “unlikely to be carcinogenic” or have evidence of “non-carcinogenicity.”
“This research demonstrates the importance of studying environmental exposures, such as pesticide use, to potentially explain some of the geographic variations we see in prostate cancer incidence and deaths in the United States. “By building on these findings, we can advance our efforts to identify risk factors for prostate cancer and work to reduce the number of men affected by this disease,” said lead author Dr. Simon John Christoph Soerensen of the Faculty of Medicine. of Medicine at Stanford University.
#pesticides #linked #increased #risk #prostate #cancer
