For decades, Iowa farms have been blanketed by pesticides used to control weeds and pests. It’s a staple of the state’s dominant corn and soybean industries. But it also could be tied to the state’s growing cancer rates.
“If you did an aerial map of Iowa, we are — river to river and north to south — a bath of ag chemicals: herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, nitrates,” said Dr. Richard Deming, a Des Moines oncologist.
It’s not just a problem in Iowa. Across the Midwest, growing scientific research is linking the chemicals used on crops to increasing cancer rates. Cancer is quickly becoming a public health crisis in rural America.
This Investigate Midwest project will explore the link between widespread pesticide usage and cancer, how pesticide corporations are standing in the way of meaningful reform, and how the decline in rural healthcare is worsening the problem.
The series will also seek to help specific rural communities better understand their risk to dangerous pesticides and how to get ahead of a potentially deadly cancer diagnosis.
