Research finds 485 chemicals in US pesticide products linked to breast cancer

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/26/breast-cancer-us-pesticide-products

Comments

timrSep 28, 2026, 2:50 AM
The actual paper [1] is quite bad. They mine the literature for chemicals with any publication that suggests a link to cancer (or appearance in certain databases based on the same approach), and then spend most of their efforts determining amounts of production and use of the chemicals in question.

This is almost pure propaganda. No actual science has been performed, and the quality of the result is directly dependent on the underlying quality of thousands of individual studies that haven’t been reviewed.

(To be completely fair to the authors, the Guardian article is completely misleading. Their goal was not to identitfy carcinogens, but rather, to engage in “risk reduction analysis” for the universe of chemicals that might plausibly be considered a carcinogen if you didn’t have any other evidence and cast a ridiculously wide net. Still a dumb goal, IMO, but not as dumb as the article makes it sound.)

[1] https://pubs.acs.org/evhpaz/article/doi/10.1021/EHP.6c00022/...

userbinatorSep 28, 2026, 5:56 AM
It's what happens when activists take over science.
UpsideDownRideSep 28, 2026, 6:10 AM
Yeah I concur, economic science is the prime example.
loegSep 28, 2026, 2:39 AM
As usual in this kind of thing, "linked to" in this context does not mean anything like "actually known to cause breast cancer in humans." Just as we have cured cancer in rodents repeatedly, we have also caused cancer in rodents repeatedly, sometimes by giving them extremely high doses of chemicals that do not correspond to how much a human might consume.
VladVladikoffSep 28, 2026, 2:33 AM
I really hope that Canada joining the EU forces some stricter regulations on crops grown in Canada. It’s sad how poor of a job our government does to protect its citizens.
refurbSep 28, 2026, 3:08 AM
What EU regulation related to crop growth are you most interested in Canada adopting?
VladVladikoffSep 28, 2026, 3:41 AM
Banning Atrazine, Diquat, Mancozeb, Chlorothalonil and Bromoxynil would be a good start. I’ve noticed significantly less pollinator species in the past 20 years, many insects are dying out because of these pesticides. I won’t comment on cancer or other side effects as I’m not educated enough to know the truth, but it seems if we have one large world government universally agreeing that these things are bad, and should be banned, it feels weird that other g7 nations continue on with their head in the sand.
mattmaroonSep 28, 2026, 2:14 AM
“Linked to” is a keyword indicating pseudoscience. Everything is “linked to cancer”.
vardalabSep 28, 2026, 2:47 AM
Article does say the breast cancer rate has been increasing by one percent annually. That's significant.
hackernud3sSep 28, 2026, 3:18 AM
Whoa, at that rate it will be over 100% by 2120.
thesmtsolver2Sep 28, 2026, 2:54 AM
How much of it is due to other sources of death being addressed?
rdiddlySep 28, 2026, 2:31 AM
"Linked to" by having been studied and shown to increase tumor rates in rodent testing. That not good enough for ya? Too pseudo-sciencey?
timrSep 28, 2026, 2:34 AM
Yes, that’s not good enough. Rodents are not humans. Then you have to deal with the dose, the setting, the difference in healthy lifespan, and a million other factors that differ from actual people in the real world.

On top of all of that, this paper did no actual research - it just mined existing literature for any chemicals with at least one paper saying that it did something cancer-related in mice or other assays.

Based on prior experience, almost certainly a substantial proportion of these papers are crap, but they don’t make any effort to figure that out (because that would be science, and therefore hard.)

InsanitySep 28, 2026, 5:15 AM
+1. On the opposite side of cancer research - We're already pretty good at eliminating cancer in rodents, it just doesn't translate well to humans. Animal testing might have done more harm than good for human healthcare in the long run. People stick to animal models out of a "we've done it this way forever" way of thinking, not because it still makes sense.
MadmallardSep 28, 2026, 2:38 AM
This problem with things like this is that the real science is extremely costly to do and the usage of chemicals across the entirety of our environment is exploding borderline exponentially with time and obviously these things we didn't evolve to tolerate and low and behold so many new health issues are just skyrocketing in incidence.

So what do?

Just sit around and nitpick? Honk honk

timrSep 28, 2026, 2:46 AM
> Just sit around and nitpick? Honk honk

The alternative is just making things up because it makes you feel better, so I’ll take actual science.

rdiddlySep 28, 2026, 3:10 AM
That's the other extreme, not "the alternative." Science is knowing fewer things, but knowing them well (to a high degree of certainty). Making stuff up is "knowing" more things but being uncertain and/or wrong. In between the two, there's a whole spectrum. I'm willing to "know" a few more things, but know them less well. Like being pretty sure pesticide exposure is not decreasing my risk of cancer for example.

The other thing is, I would be willing to be presumptively wrong about something like this, for the sake of safety. If someone wants to add a chemical to "the environment" (a commons) then I think the burden of proving it's safe falls on them.

timrSep 28, 2026, 3:31 AM
> Making stuff up is "knowing" more things but being uncertain and/or wrong.

No, making stuff up is making stuff up. Uncertainty is what we get when we run an experiment and have some level of doubt about the outcome. What the OP proposes is to instead just do stuff to solve problems that haven’t been demonstrated, by doing things that haven’t been shown to have any effect. That’s not science - it’s religion.

Attempts to get around this by invoking the “precautionary principle”, or using broadly negative Bayesian priors, are basically just religion dressed in a lab coat. For example:

> Like being pretty sure pesticide exposure is not decreasing my risk of cancer

Completely made up. Even if you wanted to point to this paper (however bad), as evidence, it doesn't defend your specific claim.

rdiddlySep 28, 2026, 3:59 AM
That's fine.
MadmallardSep 28, 2026, 4:01 AM
WHAAAAAAAAAT?
MadmallardSep 28, 2026, 2:50 AM
It's not really making anything up, it's just not high on the tier list of evidence.
abisheakp197Sep 28, 2026, 2:34 AM
You are right
anon48293Sep 28, 2026, 5:53 AM
Yes. Rodents are extremely susceptible to cancers.

Might be as high as 57% of all rats developing cancers.

https://aacrjournals.org/cancerres/article/16/3/194/473297/T...

jeffybefffy519Sep 28, 2026, 2:42 AM
But also, another way to frame this is "Linked to" is a keyword indicating we dont know enough positive or negatively for human impact, and therefore its a long term experiment.
loegSep 28, 2026, 2:43 AM
If that's the meaning, the article is uninteresting and meaningless -- telling us nothing new.
aaron695Sep 28, 2026, 2:23 AM
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