This story about elevated rates of pesticide use and cancer was originally published by Investigate Midwest.
Eastern North Dakota is a top corn and soybean-growing region, with many of its counties among the nation’s largest users of pesticides and herbicides.
It’s also home to higher-than-average cancer rates.
Of the top 500 U.S. counties for pesticide use, seven are in North Dakota, all within the Red River Valley.
Related: Minnesota lawmakers weigh funding to address rural cancer care disparity
Three of those counties — Pembina, Cass and Richland — also have cancer rates higher than the national average, according to an analysis of data from both the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Cancer Institute.
In fact, across the state, the higher a county’s pesticide use, the higher its cancer rates tend to be.
Many states across the Midwest have high rates of pesticide use and higher-than-average cancer rates.
But North Dakota is one of only two states where lawmakers have banned residents from suing agrichemical companies, such as Bayer, the maker of Roundup, an herbicide.
House Bill 1318, passed last year, was pushed for by Bayer and other agrochemical groups.
This article first appeared on
Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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