'Cancer is just everywhere': could farming be behind Iowa's unfolding health crisis?

[Brenda]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/18/iowa-farm-chemicals-cancer

As Iowa goes, so goes the nation

What a perfect fucking motto for Iowa and America at this moment.

A state with low population, extremely low diversity of people, poison farming as its number one industry is considered the most important indicator for a President of an entire country.

They would rather die of cancer than leave their cult of stupidity, Fox News addition, and sheer ignorance of how the world works.

Six months ago, Alex Hammer was diagnosed with colon cancer at the age of 37. Dianne Chambers endured surgery, chemotherapy and dozens of rounds of radiation to fight aggressive breast cancer, and Janan Haugen spends most days helping care for her 16-year-old grandson, who is still being treated for brain cancer he developed at the age of seven.

The three were among a group of about two dozen people who came together last week in a small town in central Iowa to share their experiences of cancer. They are part of a new research project investigating potential environmental causes for what the American Cancer Society’s advocacy arm calls a cancer “crisis”.

For the last few years, Iowa has had the second-highest rate of cancer in the nation, and is only one of two US states where cancer is increasing.

“People in rural communities are getting sick. Cancer is just everywhere,” said Kerri Johannsen, senior director of policy at the Iowa Environmental Council, a non-profit focused on improving the environment that is helping to lead the project. “Every person I talk to knows somebody that has [recently] had a cancer diagnosis,” she said. “It’s just a constant drumbeat. It’s scary.”

[mikeysnot]

1. Mon

Satan.

[buzzycrumbhunger]

2. I grew up in Eastern Iowa...

… and the first place I’d look (and I’m sure they have, but corporate interests squelched the answers) is Round-Up. They spray that shit EVERYWHERE, amongst other things.

Even going vegan probably doesn’t spare you. Once that stuff is out there, I suspect it stays forever.

[Brenda]

4. Glad you survived growing up in that environment

Iowans have always had this "Some People are more equal than others" thing because someone said they were the Real Americans.

Now we see how they are maybe the stupidest or just the most gullible that they poisoned themselves.

My grandparents were farmers in the South so I have nothing against farmers.

Just racist, ignorant ones.

[buzzycrumbhunger]

9. Well, back in the day, IA was heavily blue...

It was only when Rush Limpballs appeared that people there started cultivating ignorance and falling prey to the right-wing agenda (i.e. keep ‘em stupid and pander to their prejudices). Before that, the state was a model of educational excellence. I cringe to think what the results of the yearly Iowa Basic Skills Test look like now—if they even bother anymore.

I miss a lot about Iowa, but that doesn’t include the people… including what’s left of my family. Don’t see myself ever yearning to go back, even 30 years later.

Not that Florida has panned out any better.

[Bettie]

14. And when all the AM radio stations

were turned into right wing hate media. DH and I grew up in Wisconsin, also generally blue...but AM radio was on in the barn or shop all day. Once it started to change, people started to change and not for the better.

We live in Eastern Iowa now. In the 23 years we've lived here it has changed a lot and none of it for the better.

[Celerity]

7. Careful, you are going to trigger the DU Monsanto fan club.

[Brenda]

10. lol!

[niyad]

3. Hinckley 2.0???

[dalton99a]

5. Kick

[sinkingfeeling]

6. Roundup?

[onethatcares]

12. mono-culture and

herbicide laced livestock feed. You can't even plow it into the fields. At one time crop rotation and manure tillage created bio-divercity but the bean counters just had to use every square inch as a cash register.

Research it, check out "clean straw"

[AntiFascist]

8. RFK Jr. is so focused on mercury in vaccines...

but it is actually environmental mercury (from coal burning power plants) and other environmental poisons that are causing autism and cancer, including pollutants from weed abatement chemicals.

[JHB]

11. You mean RFK Jr, 'cause for everyone except Q-nuts, JFK Jr. died a quarter century ago

[AntiFascist]

16. Sorry, fixed it! n/t

[Liberal In Texas]

13. I had an uncle who was an Iowa farmer. He died from leukemia at a fairly young age.

It was many years ago, but I wondered then about the exposure to the chemicals liberally used on farms.

[Ms. Toad]

15. One of the only known risk factors for my rare cancer -

is exposure to herbicides.

I grew up on a Nebraska farm, surrounded by corn fields.

(Very little is known about what causes soft tissue sarcoma. One of the few relatively accepted risk factors is herbicide exposure.)

Yesterday I learned my cousin has stage IV lung cancer, with weeks to live absent very aggressive treatment - which might extend it as much as a couple of years. She was exposed to second-hand smoke from her father, but never smoked herself. But she grew up in the same cornfields I grew up in.