Cancer Treatment and Health Care

Farmers live with a domesticated nature, but nature, after all. Or perhaps not be so, because being surrounded by land, trees, sun, rain and wind can be detrimental to these professionals … as long as contact with pesticides. According to a recent study, the farmers are more likely to get cancer of the blood as a result of pesticide use, concluded by the Centre for Immunology, Marseille-Luminy.

This study is important because it demonstrates for the first time that there is cause and effect relationship between exposure to pesticides by farmers and some types of blood cancer. So far, the impact of environment on the health of farmers was a mere guess, but now got tested at the molecular level, the risk of certain cancers.

Observe cells farmworkers exposed to pesticides has been instrumental in biomolecular study, conducted over the past five years with more than 144 farmers in contact with these chemicals. The researcher Bertran Nadel explains that, unlike the rest of the population, exposed to pesticides agricutores “develop in its genome of 100 to 1,000 times more abnormal cells, which eventually can be transformed follicular lymphoma, a type of cancer the blood. “

This type of cancer, asymptomatic, incurable, is the sword of Damocles of farmers, on the 50 to 67 years, which, however, generally develop fewer cancers than other professionals.

The good part of this story is that scientists have identified factors that increase the risk as “the kind of pesticides used, the size of farms, the method of application and doses,” says Nadel.

The bad part, it is not easy to change things, because follicular lymphoma increases the Gallic country around 4% annually, and is the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths nationwide. Besides, France is the largest user of pesticides (herbicides, insecticides and fungicides) in Europe and third in the world rankings.