Earth-orbiting satellites aid cancer study
Satellites are being used to track pesticides applied to corn and soybean fields, but there are some you can monitor from your own front porch. (Vincent Horn)
Scientists have been using historical satellite imagery to identify crops that used pesticides with the potential to cause cancer.
A study by the National Cancer Institute revealed a trend of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in farmers in the American midwest. These individuals were known to work with agricultural chemicals. But the researchers wanted to assess exposure for others living around the fields.
John Nuckols: Now, even though the people that you ask these questions may not know anything about the crops around their home – and even if they did would not know anything about pesticide use or timing of pesticide use – we can reconstruct that potential exposure, we can reconstruct that information, using this satellite imagery data.
That’s John Nuckols of Colorado State University. He and his fellow researchers used Landsat images to identify past corn and soybean fields, and associate them with the pesticides used in previous decades.
They found that people who live near large fields of corn andsoybeans were also exposed to pesticides. These researchers are now applying this same model to assess pesticide levels in other parts of the country as well.
Our thanks today to NASA: explore, discover, understand.
John Nuckols said his team’s research was “a feasibility study to see if satellite imagery, and GIS technology could be applied to a cancer epidemiology study to reconstruct acreage of crop around a particular residence.”
The study was successful by all counts. Nuckols said, “We can go back in time over a period of exposure. For example, in a childhood study, we can collect address history information to know where the child was born, what house they lived in when they were born, all the way up to the time at which they were diagnosed with cancer. And now with this technology, what it allows us to do is use this satellite imagery, we can with a high degree of accuracy know what crops were grown in close proximity to that home, and what pesticide use was most probably associated with that crop. And now, using this predictive model, how likely it is if there were carpets in the home whether those pesticides would have occurred or been detected in that carpet dust.”
Thanks to:
John R. Nuckols
Professor
Director of Environmental Health Advanced Systems Laboratory
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado
Mary H. Ward
Epidemiologist
Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch
Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics
National Cancer Institute
National Institutes of Health
Department of Health and Human Services
Additional Teacher Resources
Environmental Health Perspectives: Identifying Populations Potentially Exposed to Agricultural Pesticides Using Remote Sensing and a Geographic Information System
This study showed that remote sensing data and historical records on crop location can be used to create historical crop maps. Using a GIS, zones of potential exposure to agricultural pesticides and proximity measures can be determined for residences in a study.
NASA: Helping Farmers Compete in World Markets
This article discusses a program developed by NASA and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) called Ag 20/20. The goal of Ag 20/20 is to use NASA research and technology to create tools that a farmer can use to more efficiently manage production, save money, and help preserve the environment.
