Copyright © 2005 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS |
Pesticide Use and Breast Cancer Risk among Farmers’ Wives in the Agricultural Health Study
1 Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.
2 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY.
3 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Research Triangle Park, NC.
4 Department of Epidemiology, College of Public Health, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.
5 Battelle Centers for Public Health Research and Evaluation, Durham, NC.
The authors examined the association between pesticide use and breast cancer incidence among farmers’ wives in a large prospective cohort study in Iowa and North Carolina. Participants were 30,454 women with no history of breast cancer prior to cohort enrollment in 1993–1997. Information on pesticide use and other information was obtained by self-administered questionnaire at enrollment from the women and their husbands. Through 2000, 309 incident breast cancer cases were identified via population-based cancer registries. Rate ratios were calculated for individual pesticides using Poisson regression, controlling for confounding factors. Breast cancer standardized incidence ratios were 0.87 (95% confidence interval: 0.74, 1.02) for women who reported ever applying pesticides and 1.05 (95% confidence interval: 0.89, 1.24) for women who reported never applying pesticides. There was some evidence of increased risk associated with use of 2,4,5-trichloro-phenoxypropionic acid (2,4,5-TP) and possibly use of dieldrin, captan, and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-TP), but small numbers of cases among those who had personally used the pesticides precluded firm conclusions. The authors found no clear association of breast cancer risk with farm size or washing of clothes worn during pesticide application, but risk was modestly elevated among women whose homes were closest to areas of pesticide application. Further follow-up of this cohort should help clarify the relation between pesticide exposure and breast cancer risk.
agriculture; agrochemicals; breast neoplasms; fungicides, industrial; herbicides; insecticides; pesticides; risk
Abbreviations: CI, confidence interval; DDT, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane; dichlorvos, 2,2-dichloroethenyl dimethylphosphate; RR, rate ratio; TCDD, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin; 2,4,5-T, 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid; 2,4,5-TP, 2,4,5-trichloro-phenoxypropionic acid.
Correspondence to Dr. Lawrence Engel, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Epidemiology Service, 307 East 63rd Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10021 (e-mail: engell{at}mskcc.org).
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