Study of pesticide-prostate cancer link raises drift concerns

A study conducted by the University of Southern California attempted to find increased exposure to pesticides among older men in California’s Central Valley. The state’s cancer registry was used to recruit 173 white and Latino seniors who were already diagnosed with prostate cancer. Medicare and tax records were used to recruit 162 men without prostate cancer.

The study traced the men from 1974 to 1999 and compared those locations with state records of pesticide application. It attempted to show that men who were not agricultural workers who lived near places where methyl bromide, captan and eight other organochlorine pesticides were used were at greater risk.

Critics of the study claim the way “pesticide exposure” was defined was not clear, and the study did not take into account if the men used household pesticides.

"Just because you lived in the vicinity of an application doesn’t guarantee you were exposed,” Robert Krieger, a toxicologist at UC Riverside, told the Los Angeles Times. "The attempts to reconstruct exposure in retrospect is extremely uncertain.

The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program.

The California Department of Pesticide Regulation has not reviewed the study, but a spokesperson defended efforts to guard against pesticide drift.

Source: Environmental Health Sciences