Older adults who live in southcentral Pennsylvania have higher rates of melanoma skin cancer, according to a study by Penn State researchers that found that counties with more farmland and herbicide use also have more melanoma, and not just among farmers.
“Our results showed that there was a strong signal or pattern that counties that had high melanoma rates also had higher amounts of agriculture, specifically cultivated crops,” said Benjamin Marks, who is in his last year as a medical student at the Penn State College of Medicine and is first author of the paper. “And those counties also with high melanoma had an increased proportion of acres that were treated with pesticides, with herbicides showing the highest pattern.
The researchers analyzed five years of data for adults 50 and older in Pennsylvania. They looked at the percentage of land used for agriculture and the proportion of acres treated with pesticides and herbicides…