Cancer mystery in the US: Corn fields are singled out

TT

Updated 07.19 | Published 06.00

 

Young Americans in the Midwest are suffering from cancer and pesticides and fertilizers used in the corn fields are pointed out as the cause. Archive photo. Photo: Charlie Riedel/AP/TT

Unusually many young people are suffering from cancer in the Midwest in the US, shows an examination by The Washington Post. Now all eyes are on the vast corn fields.

– I'm 29, but I feel like 78 inside, says cancer patient Beatrice Abang-Ntuen.

Beatrice Abang-Ntuen was 25 years old when she felt a lump in her breast. The current cancer treatment could lead to infertility, which worries her and her boyfriend, who want siblings for 8-year-old Jai'Lena.

- Talking about infertility gives me panic attacks, the nursing student tells The Washington Post.

When the United States began comparing rates in 1999, the corn-producing states of Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Minnesota and Indiana had the same rate of cancer cases among young people as the rest of the country.

The highest nitrate levels in the United States

In the 2000s, a change began to occur in the states, and today they have a much higher rate of cancer cases among people aged 15 to 49 than the rest of the country, the newspaper's data analysis shows. Several forms of cancer are also significantly more common among young adults, especially kidney and skin cancer.

An annual report on the causes of cancer in Iowa points out the soil, where groundwater has the highest average nitrate contamination in the country and the soil has among the highest levels of radon. Both are considered to pose a cancer risk and their occurrence is mainly attributed to decades of fertilizer use.

Recently, Bayer – the manufacturer of the pesticide Roundup – faced a setback when a bill in Iowa that would have made it impossible to sue the company for causing cancer was voted down. The pesticide contains glyphosate, which can cause cancer and a number of other health problems. Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world.

Not determined

While the management of the farmland is being pointed out from various angles, there is still no established cause for the number of cancer cases. Iowa’s governor has invested almost 10 million Swedish kronor in a research project that will answer the question.

According to Mary Charlton, director of the Iowa Cancer Registry, the explanation probably lies in several different factors.

– The complicated thing is that it is not today’s risk factors, it is our risk factors from 10, 20, 30 years ago that are causing cancer today.