We used to be No. 1 in schools. Now, at least we’re No. 2 in cancer.

Experts are perplexed that Iowa ranks second in the nation for cancer rates, behind Kentucky. Ours is the only state that showed an increase last year, according to a report from the Iowa Cancer Registry. New cancer cases are double what they were a half-century ago.

“We’ve really been trying to dig into that because it just seems so unbelievable that here in Iowa we would have the second-highest rate of new cancer cases around the country,” said University of Iowa associate professor of epidemiology Mary Charlton, who directs the Iowa Cancer Registry.

We smoke a little more than the average Midwesterner, but certainly not like a Kentuckian or a Southerner generally. We drink a lot of beer, No. 3 in the USA (Wisconsin being tops). Our favorite pastimes are eating and watching sports on TV. Bacon full of nitrite is venerated, as it is in Minnesota and Nebraska. We’re old but not the oldest, ranking 18th for residents over age 65.

It makes you wonder why we stand out among our neighbors. All major cancer rates are up. Breast cancer is most prevalent at 14% of cases, closely followed by lung and prostate comprising 13% each.

 We live in a toxic cloud of herbicides and pesticides, anhydrous ammonia, air particulates laden with livestock excrement, and surface water polluted by nitrate like no place else.

That’s the obnoxious uncle nobody wants to confront.

Iowa is the most cultivated place on the planet. The past 50 years have witnessed dazzling advances in technology, consolidation and intensity. The Raccoon River once ran clean. In that same time, cancer has increased while it’s gone down elsewhere.

Back in 1980 we used to think 150 bushels of corn was outstanding. Good enough, certainly, to run 30 sows. It became never enough. Now, every acre gets planted for 200 bushels with anhydrous and chicken litter and all manner of weed and pest killer. The 30 sows now live with thousands of others in huge nurseries. We are packing more livestock into northwest Iowa confinement than anyplace in North America.

The Food and Drug Administration says glyphosate (Roundup) is safe. Not so juries who also considered the facts and science from peer-reviewed research and have awarded hundreds of millions in damages to cancer victims. 

Scientists are just learning how nitrate causes not only blue baby syndrome but plays a role in many neurological disorders and cancers. They are also learning that what federal authorities accept for nitrate load in water is three times higher than what the University of Iowa College of Public Health suggests as safe (5 mg/l). Even exposure below that level may pose hazard.

Yet Iowa courts say that non-point nitrate pollution of drinking water sources cannot be litigated but must be legislated. The legislature refuses to take up the matter, relying on a law written in 1918 that holds pollution harmless “in the interest of public health.”

That’s what sets Iowa apart.

Yes, we’re getting old and sedentary. So is North Dakota. They smoke in Nebraska. Minnesotans do not shrink from drinking. They eat a lot of red meat in Kansas. There are plenty of people in Illinois built for comfort and not speed.

Nobody raises hogs and poultry like we do. Nobody farms a higher percentage of land. Few places take a looser view toward pollution than Iowa. Nobody really has any idea how much manure is pumped where. We have enshrined in state law protections against agribusiness practices that could be considered a nuisance.

We need livestock. We need fertilizer. We need chemicals. We also need to recognize limits that Nature imposes — eventually the weeds figure out the chemical silver bullet. We ignore the fact that we have generated a toxic cloud that may be unique and that we still do not understand.

Most Iowans instinctively know, which is the crazy part. They passed a constitutional amendment overwhelmingly 13 years ago calling for a dedicated stream of sales tax revenue to improve water quality. Not a penny has been appropriated.

We have picked our poisons. Don’t complain to me about smoking when you’re blowing Dicamba and stench in my face. Beer washes it away.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County

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Tar Macias, Hola Iowa, Iowa

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