Investigation of Relationships Between the Geospatial Distribution of Cancer Incidence and Estimated Pesticide Use in the U.S. West

Abstract

In recent years, several studies have explored the geospatial distribution of cancer incidence across the United States at state (Siegel et al., 2018) and county (Boscoe & Johnson, 2014;Farazi et al., 2018) levels of resolution, reflecting a growing recognition of the connections between geography and health. While these studies found statistically significant differences among states and regions, they did not attempt to relate those findings to environmental factors. Recently, studies have begun to analyze the relationship of cancer to various environmental agents such as pesticides (Leonel et al., 2020;Park et al., 2020;Werder et al., 2020). However, most of these studies focus on specific environmental agents and their relationship to specific cancer types such as brain tumors (

Pesticides monitoring in surface water of a subsistence agricultural catchment in Uganda using passive samplers

“…Comprehensive knowledge about pesticide use is important for better linking and understanding pesticide use and its impact on environmental health. It is also essential to relate the application of these chemicals with human health outcomes (see, e.g., Joseph et al 2022. ).…”

An ecological study regarding the association between paraquat exposure and end stage renal disease

“…Due to the sampling of farm operations for the collection of pesticide application data, some pesticide-by-crop combinations are not enumerated for some regions. As a result, the pesticide estimate for a given area is calculated using estimates from neighboring geographic regions; this is referred to as the EPest-high estimate and, consistent with prior studies, will be used in the current study [ 40 ]. Finally, for California, pesticide use estimates are based on data obtained from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, which requires the reporting of all pesticides applied in the state.…”

The US Geological Survey Plans to Severely Curtail the National Pesticide Synthesis Project

“…The utility of these data is clearly illustrated in two of our recent publications. Joseph, Propper, et al (2022), for example, used the current data to extract pesticide profiles of 11 states found in the Western United States at county scale. We found that these states are divided into two distinct groups: those that are herbicide‐dominated and those that are fumigant‐dominated (Figure 1).…”