EPIDEMIOLOGICAL

EVALUATION OF CANCER
RISK IN HUMANS DUE TO
PESTICIDE EXPOSURE
CONTENTS

▪ Pesticides and Cancer

▪ Why I’m concerned
▪ Exposure pathways
▪ Current Research
▪ Case studies
▪ Prevention techniques
▪ Public Health Tools
▪ Future Scope
Pesticide and Cancer

▪ PESTICIDES: Used in agriculture, forestry and households

▪ Pest control, improved yield and better quality produce.
▪ Serious health concern from prolonged exposure
▪ CANCER: Second leading cause of death in USA
▪ Despite reduction in cancer rate in recent years, top cause of death in
21 of the 50 states.
▪ IARC identified 39 active ingredients in pesticides as known or likely
human carcinogens.
Why I’m concerned

▪ 120,000 cases of cancer each year are due to pesticides

▪ Uncertainty about effects of pesticides on human health
▪ Avoidable disease
Exposure Pathways

▪ Ingestion, Inhalation and dermal pathways

▪ Operational exposure –Farmworkers and Urban pest controllers
▪ Para-occupational and environmental exposures
▪ Health risk a function of exposure and toxicity : Greater exposure to
moderately toxic pesticide riskier than little exposure to highly toxic
pesticide
Information gathering

▪ Personal medical records, disease registries, biomonitoring,

distributing questionnaires related to exposure, by conducting
observational studies
▪ Challenge of establishing a valid association
▪ Agriculture Health Study AHS findings
Current Research

▪ Epidemiological studies focused on high-risk populations of

farmworkers in developed countries.
▪ Found a relation between pesticide exposure and certain lymphomas
and sarcomas
▪ Farmers experience higher than expected levels of certain cancers
like stomach, blood stream, prostate and skin cancers
▪ Childhood cancer not fully understood but association found
between exposure and tumor, NHL and leukemia
Case studies

Lindane Glyphosate
Pesticide Cancer Prevention

▪ Preventing exposure prevents Cancer

▪ Occupational and environmental
▪ Safety equipment and clothing
▪ Safe application practices
▪ Indoor pest controllers
▪ Accidental exposure prevention
▪ Lawn care
Alternatives to Pesticides

▪ Bio-pesticides
▪ Farming techniques- crop rotation, polyculture
▪ Pest resistant crop
Public Health Tools

▪ Provide training to the most vulnerable groups

▪ Awareness about exposure
▪ Awareness converting to safety behavior?
▪ Specific Regulations
▪ Health benefits and insurance policy
▪ Farmworker demographics
▪ Funding cancer research
Conclusion and Future Scope

▪ Keep in mind the limitations of epidemiology

▪ Most studies focus on male agricultural populations- need to extend
that to female family members and children
▪ Need more data from diverse ethnicities
▪ Most studies are on farm occupational exposure
▪ Lack of data on nonagricultural pest controller
▪ Biopesticide research
▪ Genetically Modified crop
 References
1. http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/10/11/1155.long
2. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3181/00379727-216-44164
3. IARC Website, link http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/
4. http://www.who.int/ipcs/publications/pesticides_hazard_2009.pdf
5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470059/
6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2515569/
7. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK208246/
8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108117/
9. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2642860/
10. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2231435/
11. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2093791113000292
12. https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1408273/
13. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ebe9/178e4b24b6c7311d81d757156b2a0a90fc03.pdf
14. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5451510/
15. https://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr236_E.pdf
16. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-01/documents/pesticides-industry-sales-usage-2016_0.pdf
17. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2231435/
18. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1241168/pdf/ehp110s-000233.pdf
19. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2331205X.2016.1155373
20. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-52683-6_9
21. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169515003000446
22. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1241168/
QUESTIONS?