Can exposure to pesticides cause cancer?
A. Only pesticides which do not pose an unacceptable risk of cancer in humans are registered for use in Canada. Detailed risk assessements and very large margins of safety are built into the human health evaluations that the PMRA carries out on proposed pesticides so that Canadians will be protected from risks such as cancer. The first step in a human health evaluation is an examination of scientific studies to determine if the pesticide causes adverse effects in laboratory animals. One of the effects that is looked for is whether the pesticide causes cancer in animals. The majority of pesticides registered for use in Canada do not cause cancer in laboratory animals. If there is evidence that a proposed pesticide causes cancer in laboratory animals, a special type of assessment called a quantitative risk assessment is conducted to determine if the use of the pesticide would cause an unacceptable risk of cancer in humans. PMRA’s risk assessments consider how the cancer is caused in labo
