New Delhi: People have long been wary of the chemicals in pesticides, and now a new study says that hundreds of these chemicals could increase the risk of breast cancer. The most alarming findings is that many of these are not the chemicals that regulators watch out for when testing the safety of a pesticide.
“Our findings highlight a regulatory blind spot around so-called inert ingredients. When we think about pesticide safety, we tend to focus on the active ingredient. But people are exposed to the entire formulation, and our findings show that many of those other chemicals may also pose a risk,” lead author Jennifer Kay, a research scientist at Silent Spring, said in a statement.
The findings, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, are a part of a larger initiative to identify cancer-causing chemicals in everyday products, the environment, and other such factors that people are exposed to.
“When it comes to cancer, we need to think about the totality of our exposures. People are exposed to hundreds of chemicals from multiple sources over the course of their lives, and these exposures add up. But regulators don’t consider these exposures together,” Kay added.
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A prevalent cancer
Breast cancer is among the most frequently diagnosed cancers globally, with over 2.3 million new cases estimated each year. In India, it accounts for about 27 per cent of all new cancer cases recorded.
For the study, the team of scientists analysed several US government databases and found that of the 485 chemicals found in pesticides, only 145 were registered with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as “active ingredients”. The “inactive” ingredients might not play a direct role in the performance of the pesticide but they are added to improve the performance of the product sometimes as solvents, foam preventers, or even preservatives.
An earlier 2020 study by Silent Spring, an institute researching the environment and women’s health found that dozens of pesticides were linked to tumors in the mammary gland in animal studies.
“EPA continues to approve new pesticides without adequate oversight and with little consideration of their potential effects on breast cancer. Breast cancer can take years to develop, so tracking and reducing people’s exposure to pesticides from multiple sources is an essential part of cancer prevention and is necessary to protect public health,” co-author Ruthann Rudel, director of research at Silent Spring, said in the statement.