Quick Take
The rates of pediatric cancer in Santa Cruz are the second highest of all counties in the state, writes Valerie Bengal, a physician who has been practicing for four decades in Salinas and the Pajaro Valley. “At 22.5 childhood cancers per 100,000 children, the rate in our county is more than 38% above the overall California rate of 16.3 between 2017 and 2021,” she writes. She blames pesticides as a likely contributor and insists we must do more to limit their use.
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I have been a physician specializing in family and community medicine with expertise in environmental health in Salinas and the Pajaro Valley for more than four decades and continue to witness the detrimental health effects of pesticides and industrial agriculture on our communities. I believe we can and must do better.
During the 1980s, a time of frequent mass pesticide poisonings of farmworkers, researchers discovered the effects of long-term harm and diseases amid decades of research. It became painfully clear that prevention was the only remedy for all these diseases.
The pediatric cancer treatments available today, at UC San Francisco and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, are excellent, but the damage and repercussions of each case of childhood cancer are devastating and often irreparable.
Pesticides must be phased out.
The epidemiology of pediatric cancer has been extensively studied throughout the world. The causes of cancer vary with the type of cancer, but are usually due to several factors acting together at critical times in human development. Exposure to multiple toxins in the environment is common and cumulative, leading to even more severe consequences. Studies – many referenced below– show that genetic traits and environmental toxins can initiate cancer, even before birth. Children and pregnant women are more vulnerable to the deleterious effects of toxins, but harmful effects on the reproductive system of men can affect their children as well. Because any woman working in the fields could be pregnant, the safety standards must be strict enough to protect them in order to protect everyone.
The pediatric cancer rate for children 0-14 years old is the second-highest in Santa Cruz County of all counties in the state, according to the National Cancer Institute. At 22.5 childhood cancers per 100,000 children, the rate in our county is more than 38% above the overall California rate of 16.3 between 2017 and 2021.
The high use of pesticides linked to childhood cancers is a likely contributor to this horrific harm to our children. The UCLA Fielding School of Public Health has identified 13 pesticides correlated to the onset of childhood cancer between birth and 5 years old when the mother lived within 2.5 miles of these pesticide applications while pregnant.
An average of 3,020 acres of these childhood cancer-linked pesticides were applied in Santa Cruz County between 2017 and 2021. In real terms that amounts to an average of 642 acres of chlorothalonil; 523 acres of dimethoate; 3 acres of diuron; 2 acres of kresoxim-methyl; 10 acres of linuron; 1 acre of metam-sodium; 199 acres of paraquat dichloride; 24 acres of phosmet; 967 acres of propiconazole; and 650 acres of thiophanate-methyl, according to the Department of Pesticide Regulation pesticide reports.
Earlier this year, a study in Nebraska found the strongest associations to childhood cancers from two pesticides not revealed in the UCLA study, dicamba and glyphosate. Adding these two toxic chemicals would bring the average childhood cancer-linked pesticides used in our county to 5,060 acres per year (about 8 square miles).
There is an important guideline in medicine and public health called the “precautionary principle.” If a chemical substance, a therapeutic practice, a surgical procedure, a medication or any other type of exposure is thought to be hazardous, the threat should be removed, even if there is not yet ironclad proof of harm. In the case of pesticides, the evidence of harm has been substantial over the course of decades of research. Despite this, private industry and government agencies have not implemented sufficient protections of workers and the public.
This negligence regarding the precautionary principle is compounded by environmental racism: The proximity of place of residence and of work to toxic exposures has been studied extensively and is associated with a higher number of pediatric cancer cases. Studies show that the heaviest use of pesticides is in majority Latinx agricultural communities in California and exposes predominantly Latinx workers. These communities are essentially sacrifice zones, similar to the communities poisoned by fossil fuel companies along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
In contrast to scientific or most industrial uses of toxic substances, where the laboratory or the factory can be strictly controlled and workers can receive protection and barriers to prevent the escape of toxins, toxic substance use in the agricultural industry happens outdoors, where airborne drift, contamination of soil, water and aquifers occurs, as does extensive exposure to humans and other living beings. Pesticides cannot be recalled, just as the nerve gases on which many are based could not be recalled when deployed during World War I.
The history of regulation of pesticides and other environmental and industrial hazards shows a disgracefully slow response by the agencies in charge. It took years to make food more safe, to mitigate fallout from nuclear weapons testing, to remove lead from gasoline and paint, and to ban DDT. Regulation of pesticides and other toxic agricultural chemicals is a public and occupational health emergency.
Regulation must be stringent and quickly enforced. For example, initiating a buffer zone of 2.5 miles surrounding fields where poisons are used could lessen worker and community exposure from drift.
Extractive, toxic, industrial agriculture externalizes its hazards and costs to the most vulnerable among us. Alternatives, especially organic and regenerative agriculture, are available and increasingly adopted by farmers. There are numerous economic, social and environmental benefits to these sustainable practices, in addition to improved occupational and public health and prevention of cancer and other debilitating and lethal disorders.
Immediately reducing pesticide exposure of workers and frontline communities is an important reduction in the overall toxic burden. We must start now.
Dr. Valerie Bengal is a family medicine physician in Salinas and has over 40 years of experience in the medical field. She graduated from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in 1980. She is affiliated with medical facilities Stanford Hospital and Dominican Hospital.