Pesticides and Cancer..is there a specific pesticide that you think is dangerous?

Question

If I want to conduct a study on wheather Cancer and Pesticides have a connection which parts of the world or who do you think I should study? Not just farmers but mention farmers in china or so on..in detail please. What do you think?

Do you think this study is important?

Answer 1

ALl Pesticides are Dangerous. SOme are more dangerous than others. You can look at the active ingredient and get the MSDS to find out how bad is it for you. You can get the MSDS from the manufacturer or google it. Its the law in the U.S. that the manufacturer must provided you with the MSDS if you asked, but I don't think your an AMerican. I think the best place to study it is In the Ecuador. THey use a lot of Pesticides in growing roses. DDt use in the third world is also important. I think DDT is the worse, but i don't lnow how bad a carcinogen it is.
YOu should examin a persons dioxin level and I think Pseudocatecholamine, to determine a person exposure. YOu might do some research in these chemicals. I think it is important to study, but Pesticide is a broad subject.

Answer 2

It is not a worthwhile exercise. Not just pesticides but a whole range of products used, breathed, exposed to people are involved and it may be difficult to associate a single cause as having triggered the disease, particularly when the symptoms occur late and the gestation period would have seen association of the subjects with several carcinogenic things..

Is it your idea to study causes of cancer or evils of pesticides? Both are pretty vast areas and could be challenging unless you narrow your objective...

Perhaps you may study say, levels of the cancer incidence and health hazards in two purposively selected localities, of which one shall represent an area with least cancer incidence recently (five years average) and the other with highest incidence in five years (by taking the data of cancer cases detected in the two places from nearest clinics / cancer hospitals).. Then you may list out all the probable predisposing factors in the two locales (from the pollution levels in air, eating and other social habits etc) and try to draw generalisations (perhaps by drawing a prediction equation based on a multiple regression study of chosen - best subset - variables that could cause the disease)..

Of the chosen variables, pesticides levels in food items in the local market may also be considered. But studying exclusive contrribution of pesticides to the cancer incidence - in the light of a whole gamut of factors that could cause the disease - would be nearly impossible.

Even the earlier suggestion of studying the cancer incidence in two set of areas could be cumbersome as a great number of data would have to be collected from so many sources. If you are an institution with a band of research staff to assist and foot the money needed, it is ok but not as an individual unless you are very rich and could hire professionals.

This is my view. However I appreciate your zeal to research on some weighty subject. You may definitely take advice from resource persons of concerned fields and some social organisations involved in such activities, for detailed guidelines.