Women farm workers at high risk of developing cancer

The researchers, from the university’s Centre for Public Health Research, started collecting the data for the purpose of analysis in 2003. The analysis was conducted by interviewing 225 cancer patients between the age group of 25 to 75 years and 471 people from the general population who were randomly selected.

Evaluation of the data
During the data collection, the researchers noticed that the risk of leukaemia was four or five times greater among the nursery growers and market gardeners, as compared to the general public, while crop and vegetable growers also experienced an elevated risk of getting the disease.

It was noted that people working in plant nurseries were four times more likely to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma whereas vegetable growers and general horticulture producers seemed to have twice the risk of developing the ailment.

The study also found that the risk differed among market farmers, crop growers, field crop and vegetable growers.

Principal researcher Dr Dave McLean stated that market farmers and growers had an elevated risk of 1.8 times that of the general public, whereas this risk jumped to 3.4 times in women agricultural workers.

Gender difference ambiguous
“It is not clear why this gender difference exists, but it has been hypothesized that it may be due either to the different tasks (and therefore potential for exposure) traditionally performed by men and women in horticultural occupations, or to the fact that some of the chemicals are endocrine disruptors that affect women in a different way than they do men,” McLean said.

McLean further added that the elevated risks of leukemia may be attributed to agrichemicals they use. He felt that since a significant proportion of cases are related to chemical exposures at work, this could be avoided with better exposure controls.

The National Occupational Health and Safety Advisory Committee of New Zealand have estimated that more than 300 deaths from leukemia in the country, annually, are due to occupational exposures.

Earlier studies of horticultural industry in U.S. and Italy have demonstrated a similar trend in the health of workers exposed to agricultural chemicals like fungicides and insecticides.

These findings have been published by the Oxford University Press for the International Epidemiological Association.