Maureen Reeves Horsley, a native of a small Iowan farming county, says she can rarely look at local obituaries without seeing someone who has died from cancer.
In Palo Alto County, dozens of residents are diagnosed with and dying from cancers as their state becomes one of the few to see progress fighting the disease reversed.
And while Ms Horsley remembers a time when the area’s crops were plentiful, the lakes were crystal clear and people drank water right from their farms, residents now question whether the land they used to live off was slowly poisoning them.
Palo Alto County is home to approximately 8,800 people and 840 farms and it has cancer rates nearly 50 percent higher than the country’s average.
Ms Horsley, a former nurse, said she is among many Iowans who speculate that the farms families relied on for food and income were actually the source of their diseases because of toxic pollutants and chemicals used in the agricultural industry.
Chris Green’s husband, Jim Green, died from the brain cancer glioblastoma in 2019 after working in an Iowan aluminum plant for 40 years
Linus Solberg, a farmer and Palo Alto County supervisor, said his father developed prostate cancer and his mother, wife and three of his neighbors died from different forms of the disease
She said: ‘As a nurse practitioner I’m aware of five people now with pancreatic cancer.
‘I know 20 people who have other cancers or died of cancer here. Look at the obituaries in our newspaper. Everybody is aware this is going on.’
She added in an interview with The New Lede she and her family used to drink the water on their farm and her sister was later diagnosed with breast cancer at 27 and another was diagnosed with uterine cancer.
Unlike a majority of US states, Iowa is among a handful where cancer rates have been increasing over the last five years.
It falls in second place for the highest rate of diagnoses – approximately 480 per 100,000 people, according to the National Cancer Institute.
In Palo Alto County, rates of cancer are highest among all counties in Iowa and the second-highest of all counties in the United States, at about 660 per 100,000 people, a US News report found.
This is higher than the national average of 442 cases per 100,000 people.
In 2024, about 21,000 Iowans are predicted to be diagnosed with cancer, which, accounting for its population, is the second highest share of diagnoses in the country.
About 6,100 people are projected to die.
The state has the fastest growing rate of new cancers and the second highest cancer rate in the country for the second year in a row.
Two issues feared to be behind the state’s cancer spike: Contaminated water, soil and air from chemicals used in the state’s booming agriculture industry and Iowa’s growing alcohol problem.
Ms Horsley said: ‘We are so heavily into agriculture in Iowa. Big chemical use. Big nutrient applications. What effect is that having on people? There needs to be more research on that.
‘In the old days, the farmers lived longer lives if they didn’t die from an accident on the farm. Now everybody is getting checkups and finding out they have prostate cancer, or they’ve got glioblastoma, or they’ve got cancer in the lymph nodes. We need to find out what’s going on.’
In Davenport, Iowa, about 300 miles southeast from Ms Horsley, David Dunn and his wife Sharon Kendall-Dunn have long had concerns about the health effects they may have suffered from farming.
The Dunns told the Lede that 10 years ago, a mass was discovered in David’s abdomen and he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer previously linked to pesticides and nitrates from farms.
While the couple do not work or live on a farm, David’s doctor still said their environment could be a factor: ‘You live in Iowa,’ the couple recounted the doctor saying.
And two years ago, Sharon was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia, a cancer of the bone marrow.
Both of the Dunns grew up in Iowa and know of friends and family who have also been diagnosed with cancers, including some who have died from the disease.
In the eastern Iowan farming town of Long Grove, 65-year-old Jim Green died in 2019 from the brain cancer glioblastoma.
Prior to his death, his wife Chris Green told the Lede he had worked for 39 years at an aluminum plant where he was likely exposed to cancer-causing chemicals.
And Chris said she knows nine other people in her town that have died from the same brain cancer in the last several years.
Linus Solberg also knows of multiple people who have fallen victim to cancer.
The farmer and Palo Alto County supervisor told the Lede his father developed prostate cancer, his mother died of ovarian cancer and his wife and three of his neighbors died from various forms of the disease.
He said: ‘So that’s six right there on two miles along this road. I don’t know if its pesticide, or electrical. We have all these windmills. I don’t know if it’s in the water. I have no idea.’
Each year, the Iowa Cancer Registry and University of Iowa release a report on how the state’s cancer cases line up with the rest of the country.
Dr Nathan Goodyear, the medical director of an integrative cancer center in Arizona, previously told DailyMail.com both alcohol and pesticides are two major contributors to an ‘inhospitable environment’ that may raise the risk of cancer.
Agriculture in Iowa accounts for $17.3billion of the state’s $247billion gross domestic product – about seven percent. It is the third highest-grossest industry in the state.
Palo Alto County’s farms generate about $800million annually for Iowa, making up about two percent of the state’s agricultural sales. It has about 361,000 acres of farmland.
The two leading crops in the state are corn and soybeans, which require large amounts of pesticides and fertilizers.
In Palo Alto County, pigs, grains and beans are the largest farming products.
The state uses 237million pounds of weed killers and 11.6billion pounds of fertilizer per year – more than any other state. The level of fertilizer use accounts for 28 percent of the entire country’s each year.
And Iowa’s livestock and poultry industry produces more waste per year than any other state – 109billion pounds.
Both pesticides and nitrates – a byproduct of fertilizer, manure and oxygen – from animal waste routinely drain from farms into water sources. Exposure to these has been associated with an increased risk of cancers of the brain, breast, bladder, liver, bile duct and ovaries, as well as non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Dr Goodyear told DailyMail.com farming pesticides and chemicals disrupt hormones, increase inflammation, alter the body’s immune system and reduce oxygen levels in cells and tissues.
Officials are now also pointing to a unique environmental cause for the increase – a radioactive gas that is leeching from the Earth thanks to geological changes that took place during the last ice age.
Thousands of years ago, Iowa, and other parts of the Midwest, were covered by a gigantic glacier that began eroding bedrock. Today, it’s worn down enough in specific areas that radon can leach into soil and get into people’s homes.
Radon, a naturally occurring radioactive gas that gets released from weathered bedrock, is the number one cause of lung cancers in non-smokers, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services warned that radon can seep through small holes made for wiring, pipes or cracks in a building’s foundation where it accumulates undetected.
And when someone inhales high levels of the gas, it damages the lining of the lungs that could lead to cancer. The EPA estimates about 70 percent of homes in Iowa are at risk for radon exposure.
Determined to get answers to his state’s mysterious cancer epidemic, Mr Solberg has asked local health authorities to do more to investigate. While he knows Iowa’s universities have looked into the problem, he said not enough is being done to mitigate risks.
Attempting to ramp up efforts, Iowa health authorities have said they are expanding cancer screening programs for breast, lung, prostate and colon cancers.
They are also counseling residents on smoking and healthy diets and testing drinking water supplies, as well as testing homes for radon.