Cancer risk of pesticides in agricultural workers. Council on Scientific Affairs.

This report discusses some of the inherent limitations of cancer studies in animals and humans and presents a qualitative carcinogen risk assessment of a number of pesticides based on the judgment of national and international authorities who have reviewed the available experimental and epidemiologic evidence. A large number of pesticidal compounds have shown evidence of genotoxicity or carcinogenicity in animal and in vitro screening tests, but no pesticides--except arsenic and vinyl chloride (once used as an aerosol propellant)-definitely have been proved to be carcinogenic in man. Resolution 94 (1-86), which was referred to the Board of Trustees, calls for the American Medical Association, through its scientific journals and publications, to alert physicians to the potential hazards of agricultural pesticides, to provide physicians with advice on such hazards for their patients, and to urge that these substances be appropriately labeled. This report addresses the potential carcinogenicity of pesticides by review of the available literature.