Exposure to any of the marked 22 pesticides can spike the risk of developing prostate cancer among men, a new study has revealed. The research, conducted over decades since prostate cancer grows extremely slowly, was conducted by Stanford University, California. The researchers, led by Dr.
Simon John Christoph Soerensen, studied in detail the US data on county-level usage of nearly 300 pesticides and they compared those results to rates of prostate cancer 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 it grows slowly, and if it doesn't spread to other parts of the body, this cancer may not cause serious problems.
However, it can sometimes grow quickly and spread, which is more serious. To account for the ten to 18-year lag time between carcinogen exposure and the time it takes prostate cancers to grow, Soerensen's group looked at pesticide-use data from 1997 through 2001. After that, they compared the data to rates of prostate cancer for the years 2016 through 2020.
2-4-D is one of the pesticides that causes prostate cancer The researchers deduced that all together, 22 pesticides had associations with upped prostate cancer risk, although the study could not prove cause-and-effect. Three of the pesticides had already been linked previously to cancer, including 2-4-D, a commonly used pesticide in the United States. Of the other 19 pesticides, 10 were herbicide.