This Iowa community has the second highest cancer rate in the nation.

Growing up in rural Iowa, Maureen Reeves Horsley, 71, once considered her small hometown in northwest Iowa a blessing: She remembers a time when its streams ran clean and its lakes were crystal clear.

The family farm where Horsley grew up was one of more than 1,200 farms in Palo Alto County in 1970. She remembers the county's 13,000 residents having a thriving agriculture-based economy and close-knit neighborhoods, where cows grazed in lush pastures and endless cornfields stretched to the horizon.

“We had good corn and soybean harvests,” Horsley said of his family's farm along the West Branch of the Des Moines River. “We could get by on a small plot of land and we had security. It was a good life.”

Two generations later, Emmetsburg and Palo Alto County have changed dramatically, and many residents worry that the farms that have provided their livelihood may also be the source of health problems that have plagued so many families.

Horsley, a registered nurse who still lives in Iowa, is among a growing number of Iowans who question whether farms, the lifeblood of the state's economy, are causing illness and death because of toxic chemicals and other pollutants that are inherent to modern agricultural practices.

“We drank the farm's water,” Horsley said in an interview. “My sister had breast cancer. She was only 27 when she died. I grew up here. My other sister had uterine cancer. As a nurse, I know five people who now have pancreatic cancer. I know 20 people who have other cancers or who have died from cancer here. Look at the obituaries in the newspaper. Everybody knows this is happening.”

Cancer concerns rise

Palo Alto's 2022 tally 842 Farm The annual market value is roughly $800 million, but in recent decades nearly 400 small farms have been absorbed by larger ones or have closed, and Palo Alto's population has declined by 4,200 people since 1970.

Iowa farms today are focused on raising pigs and growing corn, both of which are associated with numerous environmental problems. For example, farmers who grow corn often use large amounts of toxic pesticides and fertilizers, and livestock farming generates millions of tons of manure each year. The pesticides and fertilizers contaminate the food and water of people far from the farms.

When nitrogen in fertilizers and compost combines with oxygen, nitrates form, which run off farm fields into groundwater, streams, and rivers, contaminating water sources. Infants can suffer serious health problems from ingesting nitrates in drinking water, as a growing body of evidence suggests. Show potential relevance This includes Increased risk of cancerResearchers believe that exposure to high levels of nitrates in drinking water is linked to cancers of the blood, brain, breast, bladder and ovaries.

(Photo: Keith Schneider/The New Lede)

Also, many of the herbicides and other pesticides sprayed on farms Cancer-relatedand other diseases. The National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Research Funding For more than 30 years, he has been investigating the link between disease and agriculture, focusing on people in Iowa and North Carolina. Among the survey results There are links between pesticides and malignant brain tumors, multiple myeloma, pancreatic cancer, and certain types of breast cancer.

Concerns about a link between farm contaminants and cancer are especially growing in Palo Alto County, which has the highest cancer rate of any county in the state and the second-highest cancer rate of any county in the U.S., with an average of 83 new cancer cases each year among its population of 8,996, according to a 2023 study. Report by US News.

Palo Alto County's five-year cancer incidence rate of 658.1 is well above the national five-year average of 442 new cancer cases per 100,000 people. According to the National Cancer Institute.

Concerns aren't unique to Palo Alto County. Second highest cancer incidence rate and highest rate of increase Among all states in the United States, 2024 Report The Iowa Cancer Registry released the figures, which showed that cancer rates in Iowa remained roughly steady from 2001 to 2010, then declined before beginning to rise in 2013. According to federal government data.

Medical experts and state health officials say it's hard to pinpoint exactly what's causing the cancer epidemic in Palo Alto and across Iowa, but many residents believe there's little doubt it's caused by waves of pollutants from farms spreading into the environment.

“In Iowa, we're very focused on agriculture,” Horsley said, “using a lot of chemicals, applying a lot of nutrients. How is that affecting people? That's something that needs more study.”

“It hurts so much”

David Dunn and his wife, Sharon Kendall Dunn, live in Davenport, Iowa, about 300 miles southeast of Palo Alto County. Still, the couple is concerned about the impact of agriculture and agriculture-related pollution on their health. Ten years ago, they learned that David's abdominal tumor was non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), a cancer common in rural areas across the country.

Although the couple didn't work or live on a farm, doctors suggested the environment might be to blame, and Sharon recalls that when she asked the doctor how her husband got the disease, he simply told the couple, “You live in Iowa.”

Two years ago, Sharon was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia, a type of cancer that begins in the bone marrow. So far, treatment has kept the disease under control.

“It was very painful,” she said. “Now I'm better.”

David is also undergoing treatment for cancer, but the impact it has had on his life and future has been dramatic.

“This is kind of crazy,” David said. “I stopped dreaming. I stopped dreaming about retiring. I stopped dreaming about my kids graduating from college. I never saw my kids get married. I never held my grandchildren.”

Sharon and David both grew up in Iowa, and other friends and family have been diagnosed with and even died from cancer.

In the small farming town of Long Grove, Iowa, Chris Green is mourning the death of her husband, who was stricken with a deadly brain tumor called glioblastoma in 2019. With aggressive treatment, Jim Green survived nearly two years after his diagnosis, but eventually passed away.

“He told me, 'I can't do this anymore,'” Chris recalls. “So we asked for hospice, and Jim died in our living room, surrounded by his family.”

Jim worked as a maintenance worker at an aluminum rolling mill in Davenport for nearly 39 years before his death at age 65. Exposure to various industrial chemicals there may have been a contributing factor in his illness, but some studies have suggested that Link to pesticidesA variety of drugs are used for glioblastoma, including some commonly used on farms.

Chris said he knows of at least nine people in his community who have died from glioblastoma in the past few years.

“What's happening in Iowa is a problem,” said University of Massachusetts epidemiologist Molly Jacobs. “We know that from the experience on the ground. My message is to focus on reducing exposure to known harms.”

“We need to know what's going on.”

Experts say pesticides used on Iowa farms are a likely culprit in at least some of the cases.

“A significant percentage of our land is grown in crops,” says Dr. Richard Deming, an oncologist in the state capital, Des Moines. “The way we grow crops today is to use a lot of pesticides to improve crop yields. Are there potential drawbacks? That's where we need more research. There is certainly circumstantial evidence that we are likely being exposed to more pesticides because of the nature of Iowa and the amount of acreage that is under agricultural production in Iowa.”

(Photo: Keith Schneider/The New Lede)

Living in an area where cancer rates are about 50 percent higher than the national average, Palo Alto County Supervisor and farmer Linus Solberg has asked local health officials for help in understanding the causes of the disease and reducing his risk. He knows state universities are studying the issue, but says little is being done to address the risks.

Solberg's father had prostate cancer, his mother died of ovarian cancer at age 69, and his wife and three neighbours also died of cancer.

“So there's six of them in a two-mile stretch along this road,” he said. “I don't know if they're pesticides or electricity. There's a bunch of windmills. I don't know if they're in the water. I have no idea.”

County health officials say they are expanding screening programs for breast, lung, prostate and colon cancer, giving residents advice on smoking and diet, and testing homes for levels of radon, a naturally occurring radioactive gas that is a proven carcinogen.

“Organizationally, we've been very focused on early detection and health and wellness,” said Jonathan Moe, CEO of Palo Alto County Health System.

The county also tests residential drinking water wells for contaminants under a state-funded program.

Ben Huntley, the environmental health specialist who manages the program, has taken samples from 121 homes over the past 24 months, and his records show three samples had levels of nitrates above the federal drinking water standard of 10 parts per million.

The bigger risks were E. coli (30 samples above the safety limit) and arsenic. It is a natural mineral and a carcinogen. There has been a link to lung, bladder and kidney cancer, and 45 wells exceeded safety standards.

Irish immigrants settled here in the mid-19th century.^Number Palo Alto County has endured years of poor harvests and severe droughts in the early 20th century.^Number The 21st century, and the farm crisis of the 1980s. Cancer is now Iowa's scourge.

“In the old days, farmers lived longer if they didn't die in accidents on the farm,” Horsley said. “Now, everybody gets a medical checkup and they find prostate cancer, glioblastoma, lymph node cancer. We need to find out what's going on.”

The report, published in collaboration with Circle of Blue, is part of an ongoing series examining how agricultural policies are affecting human and environmental health. This article was first published in The New Lede. Original article.