Farming today is incredibly competitive, with profit margins measured sometimes in pennies per bushel. Pesticides cost money. The NRDC would also have us think that any pesticide exposure is the next best thing to drinking Kool-Aid prepared by the Rev. Jim Jones. Obviously, pesticide application accidents happen, but farmers' real accident worries aren't chemicals but machinery. The NRDC report doesn't even pretend anybody's being fatally poisoned directly from pesticides.
Studies repeatedly show that overall farmers have less cancer and live longer than non-farmers.
The largest and most recent to date, published this year in the Annals of Epidemiology , combined 37 studies and found yet again that farmers have lower overall rates of cancer. Indeed, the only excess they found was that of the lip, apparently from sun exposure. Three federal agencies are now carrying out a massive study that also looks at children, but bear in mind that most farms are multi-generational. Those adult farmers with their low cancer rates were once children working in their parents' fields long before there was an EPA, before most pesticide application laws were passed, and when pesticides were used much more heavily than today. Farmers are trained in safe application of pesticides.