Cancer & Weed Killers

By David Perlmutter, MD, FACN

It is likely that most people generally assume that the various products they purchase at their local garden store have been extensively tested to rule out any possibility that they may be related to cancer. Unfortunately, we are now learning that many of the most widely used pesticides and weed killers are actually fraught with danger as more evidence supports their relationship to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, and various forms of cancer.

A very distressing report appeared in the journal Cancer in 1999 (Volume 85, page 1353), from the Orebro Medical Center and Lund University Hospital in Sweden. This population-based case controlled study evaluated the risk of exposure to certain herbicides and fungicides with reference to various forms of cancer. Their very distressing discovery was that risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma was 2.7 times greater in individuals exposed to a very commonly used weed killer, 4-chloro-2-methyl phenoxyacetic acid (MCPA). The authors reported significant concern since MCPA "is still much in use in agriculture as a weed killer."

In America, we vigorously use weed killers not just in agriculture, but around our homes, schools, and many other public areas. The media portrays killing weeds as almost a pleasant way to spend Saturday afternoon. We simply pay a short visit to the hardware store, buy a spray bottle of weed killer, and quickly go to work ridding our driveways and flower gardens of unsightly weeds. This report, however, should make us question our laid back attitude towards exposure to such profoundly dangerous chemicals, and perhaps cause us to look less disfavorably upon the innocent weeds growing in the cracks of our sidewalks.