1 Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Rockville, MD.
2 Epidemiology Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Research Triangle Park, NC.
3 Biostatistics Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Rockville, MD.
Received for publication May 9, 2003; accepted for publication July 31, 2003.
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ABSTRACT |
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agriculture; cohort studies; herbicides; leukemia; multiple myeloma; neoplasms; occupational exposure; pesticides
Abbreviations: Abbreviations: CI, confidence interval; OR, odds ratio; SIR, standardized incidence ratio.
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INTRODUCTION |
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Alachlor produced thyroid (3), nasal (4), and stomach cancers (5) in rats presumedly by a nongenotoxic, threshold-sensitive process (6). In 1985, the US Environmental Protection Agency categorized alachlor as a probable human carcinogen (7). There is little epidemiologic information on cancer in alachlor-exposed populations. Two retrospective cohort studies showed elevated risks for colorectal cancer and leukemia among alachlor-manufacturing workers (8, 9). However, interpretation of these findings is difficult because of the small number of observed cancer cases (n = 23 (8) and n = 18 (9)) and the lack of control for potentially confounding exposures.
The Agricultural Health Study cohort (10) will be used to comprehensively examine the hypothesized link between a wide variety of occupational exposures among farmers and commercial applicators and the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases. Our overall approach is to evaluate risk factors for specific diseases of interest once sufficient numbers of exposed cases have been observed in the cohort (e.g., prostate cancer (11)) and also to evaluate cancer risks among selected exposure groups of a priori interest. For the latter, we first focus on major-use pesticides of biologic interest. In this context, we have chosen to examine the cancer experience of alachlor applicators because alachlor is widely used in US agriculture and it has animal bioassay data, which suggest that it may be a human carcinogen.
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MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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Exposure assessment
A self-administered enrollment questionnaire collected comprehensive exposure data on 22 pesticides and ever/never use information for 28 more pesticides, as well as information on use of personal protective equipment, pesticide application methods, pesticide mixing, equipment repair, smoking, alcohol consumption, cancer history of first-degree relatives, and basic demographic data. (The questionnaire may be found at http://www.aghealth.org). Questionnaire data from the enrollment and measurement data from the published pesticide exposure literature were used to calculate the estimated intensity of exposure to individual pesticides using the formula: intensity level = (mixing status + application method + equipment repair status) x personal protective equipment use (13). We constructed two lifetime alachlor exposure variables, each categorized into quartiles for this analysis: 1) lifetime exposure-days based on the number of years applied and the frequency of application using the midpoints of the questionnaire category (i.e., years of use x days per year: <19.9, 20.056.0, 56.1116.0, 116.1) and 2) intensity-weighted exposure-days multiplying lifetime exposure-days by exposure intensity level (i.e., years of use x days per year x intensity level: <101.9, 102.0253.1, 253.2710.4,
710.5).
Data analysis
Prevalent cancer cases (n = 1,064) and applicators who did not provide any information on alachlor use (n = 6,267) were excluded from this analysis, leaving 26,510 exposed and 23,470 nonexposed applicators. Those excluded were mainly from North Carolina (69 percent) and were likely to have missing data for other variables.
A standardized incidence ratio for all cancers was calculated as the ratio of observed to expected number of cancer cases using standard methods (14, 15). Expected numbers for the standardized incidence ratio were estimated from 5-year age and calendar-time, race-specific cancer incidence rates from the population-based cancer registries in Iowa and North Carolina. We also conducted site-specific analysis for cancers with five or more exposed cases.
Poisson regression analysis using the Stata program (version 7.0) (16) was conducted while controlling for the effect of potential confounding factors to examine internal exposure-response relations. Rate ratios derived from the analysis were adjusted for age at enrollment (<40, 4049, 5059, 60 years), sex, education (high school graduate or less, greater than high school), smoking (by pack-years: never/low/high), alcohol drinking during the past 12 months (yes/no), family history of cancer in first-degree relatives (yes/no), state (Iowa/North Carolina), and enrollment year. The median value of pack-years among smokers (12 pack-years) was used to classify the "low" and "high" categories of smokers. The reference group for each rate ratio was the lowest level of lifetime exposure-days or intensity-weighted exposure-days; applicators who reported not using alachlor were excluded from the Poisson regression analyses. Since there was potential confounding from other pesticide exposures, we also adjusted rate ratios for the five most highly correlated pesticides (atrazine, cyanazine, metolachlor, trifluralin, 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D)), with intensity-weighted exposure-days of alachlor (r
0.4). The exposure levels of these five pesticides were categorized as never, low, and high. The low group and the high group of each pesticide were classified by the median intensity-weighted exposure-days of each pesticide. Tests for linear trend were performed to assess exposure-response patterns in each cancer outcome using the method described by Breslow and Day (17). All significance tests were two sided.
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RESULTS |
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The rate ratios for selected cancers, including those of a priori interest (nasal cavity, stomach, thyroid), are reported in table 3 by quartiles of lifetime exposure-days and intensity-weighted alachlor exposure-days. For all cancers combined, there was no trend of increasing risk with increasing exposure. A significant exposure-response trend was observed for all lymphohematopoietic cancers combined using either the lifetime exposure-days or intensity-weighted exposure-days, rising to an over twofold increased risk in the highest category. The risks of leukemia and multiple myeloma were markedly increased in the highest exposure category, although they had wide confidence intervals. These results were not changed when we added "total years of pesticide application" to the multivariate analysis as a surrogate measure of other potential farming exposures (data not shown). A significant trend for bladder cancer was observed for the lifetime exposure-days but not the intensity-weighted exposure-days. Similar analyses for other cancers did not suggest associations. An analysis that was restricted to private applicators living in Iowa yielded results similar to those reported in table 3. The results for North Carolina applicators were unstable as a result of smaller numbers of cases.
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DISCUSSION |
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Elevated risks for all lymphohematopoietic cancers (SIR = 3.6, 95 percent CI: 1.2, 8.5) and chronic myeloid leukemia (SIR = 25.0, 95 percent CI: 3.0, 90.3) have been reported for alachlor-manufacturing workers (9). A subsequent analysis of these manufacturing workers also showed an increased risk for chronic myeloid leukemia (8). However, population-based case-control studies have shown no significant association between alachlor exposure and leukemia (odds ratio (OR) = 1.0, 95 percent CI: 0.7, 1.5) (18), non-Hodgkins lymphoma (OR = 1.2, 95 percent CI: 0.8, 1.7) (19), or multiple myeloma (OR = 0.9, 95 percent CI: 0.5, 1.7) (20). As with many population-based case-control studies, these were limited by the relatively small numbers of exposed cases and the fact that exposure assessment was conducted after disease diagnosis.
There is some evidence of a genotoxic effect of alachlor in experimental systems. In mammals, alachlor induced chromosomal aberrations in bone marrow cells of Wistar rats treated in vivo (21) and in cultured Chinese hamster ovary cells (22). Increased thyroid, stomach, and nasal tumors were observed in Long-Evans and Sprague-Dawley rats associated with alachlor exposure (36). Alachlor also has been found to cause chromosomal damage in human lymphocytes (21, 23) exposed in vitro.
Our standardized incidence ratio analysis of those exposed and those nonexposed to alachlor indicates that the two groups are both at significantly reduced risk of cancer overall and particularly to smoking-related cancers of the lung and bladder. A similar reduced risk is observed among both groups for colorectal cancer, which may in part be due to the more physically active work of farmers and commercial pesticide applicators compared with other residents of Iowa and North Carolina. The fact that melanoma is marginally lower than expected among the nonexposed group and not among the exposed group may indicate that nonexposed cohort members are less frequently exposed to excess sunlight exposure. Although comparing all those ever exposed with those never exposed to alachlor in a standardized incidence ratio analysis can establish whether the two groups have similar cancer risk profiles, standardized incidence ratios are a relatively insensitive indicator of occupational risk because they cannot adequately control for significant confounding factors and have well-established "healthy worker" problems. The significantly lower risk of non-Hodgkins lymphoma observed among those exposed to alachlor compared with those not exposed while controlling for age, sex, alcohol, smoking, education, family history of cancer, enrollment year, state of residence, and the five most highly correlated pesticides with alachlor is unexpected. This "protective effect" of alachlor is not observed in the subsequent dose-response analysis described in table 3, and it is likely therefore to be a statistical artifact due to either chance or residual confounding resulting from exposure not explicitly identified by our questionnaire.
Although a significant 1.3-fold risk for all cancers combined was found among applicators in the second highest category of lifetime exposure to alachlor, the lack of a monotonic exposure-response relation suggests that this increase may be due to chance. Moreover, we did not find increased cancer risks for several sites of a priori interest that were positive in animal bioassays including the nose, stomach, and thyroid gland. Since the number of observed cases at these sites was small during our short follow-up study, continued follow-up is warranted. Although the use of positive animal bioassays to indicate the potentially important biologic activity of a chemical is standard practice, extrapolating organ site-specific experimental results to humans is problematic because of differences in human metabolism, physiology, and environmental conditions (24).
A previous cohort study (9) reported increased risk (SIR) for colorectal cancer among alachlor-manufacturing workers. However, Acquavella et al. (8) suggested that the association between alachlor and colorectal cancer was noncausal because they did not observe any cases in a highly exposed department and because the colon plays only a minor role in alachlor metabolism and excretion. We saw no excess for colorectal cancer in the standardized incidence ratio analysis nor any trend by level of exposure.
Our observation of a slightly increased standardized incidence ratio for prostate cancer among both alachlor-exposed and alachlor-nonexposed applicators is consistent with a previous report from this study and with results from other studies of farmers (2530). Recently, Alavanja et al. (11) reported that chlorinated pesticides and methyl bromide (but not alachlor) were significantly associated with an excess risk of prostate cancer in this cohort. We did not see any association between alachlor and prostate cancer in the Poisson analyses.
An increasing trend for bladder cancer associated with lifetime exposure-days was observed. The lack of a corresponding increase with the intensity-weighted exposure-days is difficult to explain but argues against a causal relation.
Overall, 17 percent of applicators in this cohort are current smokers, which rate is lower than for the United States as a whole (28 percent for males and 23 percent for females) (31). The observed deficits for smoking-related cancers, such as cancers of the lung, bladder, larynx, and buccal cavity, compared with rates for the general population in Iowa and North Carolina are consistent with the low prevalence of smoking in the Agricultural Health Study cohort. Our exposure-response analyses are adjusted for tobacco use and other potentially important confounders.
Although the period of cohort follow-up is still relatively short (5.5 years on average), this study has several important strengths. The Agricultural Health Study is the largest study of pesticide applicators exposed to alachlor conducted to date. All exposure information was collected prior to the diagnosis of cancer, which obviates case-recall bias. This study included comprehensive questionnaire data that were used to quantitatively estimate alachlor exposure levels and to control for potential confounding (10, 13).
A limitation of this study and almost all studies of pesticide users is that persons who apply pesticides are seldom exposed to just a single agent and that potential confounding is, therefore, possible. Coble et al. (32) evaluated the relations among different agricultural exposures and found that substantial bias due to confounding from exposure to multiple agents was unlikely in this cohort. However, the significant difference observed between alachlor users and nonusers (table 1) for age, gender, state of residence, applicator type, family history of cancer, corn production, and other coexposure to pesticides suggests the possibility that unrecognized residual confounding may bias the dose-response relation in our analysis. To mitigate the possibility of residual confounding, we chose the lowest alachlor exposure group as the referent in our rate ratio analysis rather than the nonexposed group, and we adjusted the lymphohematopoietic risk estimates by including the five pesticides most highly correlated with alachlor in our models.
A total of 857 (less than 1 percent) cohort members left the states of Iowa and North Carolina during the period of the study from 1993 through 2000, and any cancers resulting from this group are lost to the state cancer registry. This small portion of the total cohort is younger and more educated, smokes less, and has a slightly lower frequency of family history of cancer than the total cohort (data not shown) and is therefore likely to generate proportionally fewer cancers than the rest of the cohort. To assess the magnitude of the potential bias caused by having this group of low-cancer-risk study subject leave the cohort, we recalculated our risk estimated by adding all the lost person-years generated by this group to the denominator and assumed no cancer cases in the numerator. We observed only minimal changes in our risk estimates that did not affect our conclusion.
Additionally, the formulation and use of alachlor may have changed over the years. These factors create a potential for some exposure misclassification, particularly in studies where exposure is based on subject recall. Subjects in this study were asked to recall pesticide use over their lifetime. Recall of pesticide use by the Agricultural Health Study cohort has been shown to be similarly reliable to that for other factors routinely evaluated by questionnaire in epidemiology studies, such as smoking and alcohol use, and to be better than others, such as consumption of fruits and vegetables and physical activity (33). Hoppin et al. (34) also demonstrated that participants in our cohort provided plausible information regarding the duration of use of specific pesticides.
Our study had relatively low statistical power to detect excess risks for less common cancers. The statistical power to detect a 1.5-fold increase in the incidence of cancers of a priori interest varied by site, from 75 percent for lymphohematopoietic tissue to 63 percent for colon, 17 percent for stomach, and 12 percent for thyroid cancer.
Although the interpretation of our results is limited by a small number of cases, our findings suggest a possible association between alachlor application and the incidence of lymphohematopoietic cancersin particular leukemia and multiple myelomaamong applicators in the Agricultural Health Study. Additional follow-up of this cohort will shed further light on the risks for these and other cancers as the number of cancer cases increases over time.
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NOTES |
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REFERENCES |
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