Stop putting cancer-causing chemicals into Iowa’s environment

As a cancer survivor (prostate and CLL), I never heard the word carcinogen in doctors’ offices. The cancer community does not talk much about known environmental cancer risks and ways of reducing or eliminating these modifiable risks in Iowa (aside from smoking, alcohol and radon).

This past summer, I bought chicken wire to rabbit-proof my garden, I bought gardening gloves, and I bought a phone charger cord — all three had a warning sign stating that this product can cause cancer and reproductive harm, with no information as to what material exactly, route of exposure, etc. What information do we have about specific carcinogens used in large volumes in Iowa and who tracks them?

Iowa "leads" the nation in use of weed killers because the two crops that the global merchants and USDA incentives have been pushing on Iowa — corn and beans — require it. Some 50 million pounds of herbicide, insecticides and fungicides applied annually to Iowa's land, drifting into neighboring schools and towns, ending up in streams and municipal wells. Many of these pesticides have been linked to certain cancers and neurological disorders. Some are hormonally active and have been linked through research to reproductive harm and breast cancer.

Looking back at previous environmental health successes — lead, smoking, radon, PCB — in each of those situations, it was super important to know that effective alternatives existed! We then went to work and implemented community and state policies, changed habits, offered radon removal incentives, and banned lead from gas and paint as a national policy. We did not say people should be careful out there and avoid exposure to lead or PCB.

So now, public health professionals, the cancer community, and municipal water works directors in Iowa need to know that effective alternatives to extreme pesticide and extreme fertilizer use exist! Not knowing that vast body of evidence on alternatives to pesticides or nitrate in drinking water, health professionals generally have nothing to say about alternatives to high nitrate levels in Iowans' drinking water and see it as inevitable! And yet, clear and robust evidence shows that extreme use of pesticides and high nitrate levels are totally evitable.

Long term studies of crop diversification in Iowa and elsewhere have shown that we can have high yields for corn, beans and other crops with 80% less fertilizer and 90% less pesticides, and less plant diseases, while improving soil quality, reducing runoff, basically solving for a pattern of health in Iowa. There are many innovative farmers (Practical Farmers of Iowa, Iowa Organic Association, Iowa Farmers Union) who have been practicing these for decades; the widespread adoption and implementation will require a number of policies and programs that public health and cancer prevention advocates need to be aware of and share with Iowans.

I remember a California farmer who used many different insecticides on his peach orchard and whose 8-year old son was diagnosed with leukemia. After he learned about the risks of insecticides he was using, and decided to adopt alternative management practices, he said "What am I supposed to tell my son, that we don't know for sure, so I am going to continue to use these pesticides? That peaches were more important?"

Precautions are prudent when we do not have all the answers about exactly what causes a specific kind of cancer. Lots can be done right now in Iowa (at the personal, household, neighborhood, community, county, and state levels) to reduce/eliminate certain modifiable cancer risks in Iowa. For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics, after a comprehensive review of literature on children and pesticides has this concluding recommendation: "Children's exposure to pesticides should be limited as much as possible." We can do a lot in Iowa to heed this advice.

Here is the conclusion of a consensus statement by the cancer research and advocacy community submitted to the President’s Cancer Panel in October 2008: “The most direct way to prevent cancer is to stop putting cancer causing agents into our indoor and outdoor environments in the first place.” Iowa legislators can adopt policies that do that.

Kamyar Enshayan is an agricultural engineer and served on the Cedar Falls City Council 2003-2011. kenshayan@gmail.com