Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801.
Scrivner Institute of Public Policy, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, Denver, CO 80208.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023 Nov 7;120(45):e2306003120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2306003120. Epub 2023 Oct 30.
Over the last several decades, Brazil has become both the world's leading soy producer and the world's leading consumer of hazardous pesticides. Despite identified links between pesticide exposure and carcinogenesis, there has been little population-level research on the effects of pesticide intensification on broader human health in Brazil. We estimate the relationship between expanded soy production-and related community exposure to pesticides-on childhood cancer incidence using 15 y of data on disease mortality. We find a statistically significant increase in pediatric leukemia following expanded local soy production, but timely access to treatment mitigates this relationship. We show that pesticide exposure likely occurs via water supply penetration. Our findings represent only the tip of the iceberg for substantial health externalities of high-input crop production and land use change. Our results are of particular interest in developing contexts with demand for intensified food production systems and underscore the need for stronger regulation of pesticides and increased public health attention to exposure in the broader community.
在过去几十年中，巴西已成为世界领先的大豆生产国和危险农药的世界最大消费国。尽管已确认农药接触与致癌之间存在联系，但关于农药密集使用对巴西更广泛人群健康的影响，几乎没有进行过人群水平的研究。我们利用 15 年的疾病死亡率数据，来估计大豆生产的扩大——以及相关的社区接触农药——对儿童癌症发病率的影响。我们发现，随着当地大豆生产的扩大，儿科白血病的发病率呈显著上升趋势，但及时获得治疗可以缓解这种关系。我们表明，农药暴露很可能是通过供水渗透发生的。我们的研究结果仅代表高投入作物生产和土地利用变化带来的大量健康外部性的冰山一角。在对强化粮食生产系统有需求的发展中国家，我们的研究结果尤其值得关注，并强调需要加强对农药的监管，以及提高更广泛社区对暴露问题的公共卫生关注度。
