Daily on-the-job exposure to the pesticide diazinon appears to increase the risk of lung cancer and possibly other cancers, according to new findings from the US government-sponsored Agricultural Health Study, a project begun in 1993 to investigate the health effects of pesticides on farm families in Iowa and North Carolina.
By December 2002, 301 of 4,961 men with occupational exposure to diazinon had developed lung cancer compared with 968 of 18,145 with no occupational exposure to diazinon.
"We found evidence of an association of lung cancer and leukemia risk with increasing lifetime exposure days to diazinon," Dr Michael C. R. Alavanja from the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Maryland and colleagues report in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
The results were unchanged after adjusting for cigarette smoking, "suggesting that confounding due to smoking probably does not explain the elevated risks of lung cancer," the authors write.
They also point out an association between diazinon use and lung cancer was reported in an earlier analysis of the Agricultural Health Study, with fewer years of follow-up.