Study shows female farmers more likely to get breast cancer

Women who have worked on farms are about three times more likely to develop breast cancer than those who have never been employed as agricultural workers, Canadian scientists have found.

A team of researchers who studied the occupations of nearly all women with breast cancer in Windsor, Ontario in a period from 2000 to 2002 made the link between agricultural work and the disease.

Their paper, which is to be published Thursday in the Annals of the "New York Academy of Sciences", says women who worked on farms are 2.8 times more likely to develop the disease than those who have never been employed in the agricultural industry.

Exposure to pesticides may explain the link, study author James Brophy said.

A host of environmental contaminants, such as diesel fumes, antibiotics and growth hormones that are common in agricultural settings, could also be contributing to the higher cancer rates, said Brophy.

The study also found that the risk of breast cancer may linger even after a woman has left the industry to work in other occupations.

If a woman who worked on a farm went on to find a job in the health-care industry her breast cancer risk increased by 2.3 times. What's more, if she went on to find work in the auto-manufacturing industries, she was four times more likely to have the disease.

There was no extra risk of breast cancer for women who never worked on farms and then went on to find employment in the auto or health-care industries, the study found.

Researchers around the world are struggling to explain why incidences of breast cancer are much greater in industrialized countries than in developing countries.

In industrialized nations, breast cancer deaths are far higher (at a rate of 2 percent) than in economically poor regions at 0.5 percent.

The Western lifestyle of a high caloric diet, obesity and lack of physical activity may contribute to incidences of breast cancer, according to a 2003 World Cancer report, issued by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Source: Xinhua