Increased pesticide use going hand in hand with child cancer deaths in Brazil

With its status as a global agricultural powerhouse and number one soy producer, Brazil is among the world’s leading consumers of pesticides — often highly hazardous varieties. Research abounds suggesting links between pesticide exposure and negative health outcomes, and one of the most recent papers on the subject highlights an association between childhood leukemia and the expansion of soy farming in Brazil’s Amazon and Cerrado biomes.

The study, conducted by three U.S. researchers led by Marin Skidmore of the University of Illinois, points out that between 2000 and 2019, the area under soy cultivation tripled in the Cerrado, while the same expansion was twenty-fold in the Amazon. And between 2008 and 2019, the authors found an additional 123 pediatric deaths from acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

The soy expansion and Brazil’s introduction of glyphosate-resistant soybeans in the early 2000s led to a vast increase in pesticide use in the Cerrado and Amazon biomes. The researchers used their data to rule out other potential factors, highlighting increased pesticide use upstream of rural communities as the most likely cause of these childhood leukemia deaths.

Ms. Skidmore tells The Brazilian Report that the study focused on leukemia, specifically acute lymphoblastic leukemia, because there was already a suspected...