Iowa - where cancer has become a way of life
This morning, the news outlet I manage, The New Lede, published the latest in a series of stories examining the health and environmental impacts of conventional agriculture. Reported by former New York Times reporter Keith Schneider and edited by me, the series is a somber reminder that regulators and government leaders are not protecting us from very real, scientifically proven dangers associated with the modern-day model for growing food and raising livestock.
Today’s story highlights the eye-popping fact that people in Iowa are getting cancer at a rate far higher than the national average, led by the farming area of Palo Alto County where cancer incidence is nearly 50% higher than the rest of the nation.
Here is an excerpt:
Raised in rural Iowa, 71-year-old Maureen Reeves Horsley once considered her tiny hometown in the northwest part of the state to be a blessed space. She recalls a time when the streams here ran clean and the lake water was clear.
The family farm where Horsley grew up was one of more than 1,200 farms in Palo Alto County in 1970. In her memory, the county’s 13,000 residents enjoyed a thriving agricultural-based economy and close-knit neighbors. Cows grazed in verdant pastures. And seemingly endless acres of corn marched to the horizon.
“We had good crops, corn and soybeans,” Horsley said of her family’s farm along the West Fork of the Des Moines River. “You could make it on a small amount of farmland. You felt safe. It was a good life.”
Two generations later Emmetsburg and Palo Alto County have been radically transformed into a place where many residents worry that the farms that have sustained their livelihoods are also the source of the health problems that have plagued so many families.
Federal data shows that Palo Alto County has the highest incidence of cancer of any county in the state and the second-highest incidence of cancer among all US counties.
The five-year incidence rate for cancer in Palo Alto County is 658.1, far higher than the national five-year average of 442 new cancer cases reported for every 100,000 people, according to the National Cancer Institute.
The concerns are not limited to Palo Alto County: Iowa has the second-highest and fastest-rising cancer incidence among all US states, according to a 2024 report issued by the Iowa Cancer Registry. Cancer incidence in Iowa stayed mostly steady from 2001 to 2010, then dropped briefly before starting an upward climb after 2013, according to federal data.
Medical experts and state health authorities say it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what may be causing the prevalence of cancer in Palo Alto and Iowa overall. But many residents believe there is little doubt that the answers lie in the tide of farm pollutants pervading the environment.
“We are so heavily into agriculture in Iowa,” said Horsley said. “Big chemical use. Big nutrient applications. What effect is that having on people? There needs to be more research on that.”
(Read the rest of the story, and more of our Toxic Terrain series.)
This afternoon, Keith and I are sharing our work in a webinar with members of the Institute for Nonprofit News and the Rural News Network, hoping to encourage other journalists to look harder at these issues.
These stories tug at my heart, and also break it a bit. This is the future we’ve created for our kids - a world where seemingly everywhere we look, everything we touch, has been contaminated. PFAS, plastics, pesticides, air pollution, and more make up the dark legacy we leave the next generation.
So many of you are working hard to change this path, and I appreciate and applaud each of you. But as today’s story from Iowa reminds us, we must work harder.