Letter to the Editor: Submitted by Lori R. Egan
To the Editor:
Iowa is facing a public health emergency that demands honest conversation. According to the National Institutes of Health, Iowa now ranks second in the nation for cancer incidence - with an overall cancer rate more than 10 percent above the national average - and is one of only a handful of states where cancer rates are still rising. Every year, more than 21,000 Iowans are diagnosed with this disease. We deserve to know why.
The answer, increasingly, points to our environment. A March 2026 report from the Iowa Environmental Council and The Harkin Institute - the result of 16 listening sessions held across the state - identified four major environmental risk factors linked to Iowa’s cancer rates: pesticides, nitrates in drinking water, PFAS (“forever chemicals”), and radon.
Iowa ranks fourth nationally for total pesticide use by weight, and 85 percent of its land is devoted to crops or animal agriculture. Our Des Moines and Raccoon rivers are in the top one percent of rivers nationwide for nitrate concentration, with 80 percent of that contamination coming from agricultural run-off.
Yet our state’s official response has been remarkably slow. The 2024 Iowa Cancer Registry report - which made national headlines - focused almost entirely on alcohol consumption as a driver of cancer, without a single mention of agricultural pollution in its recommendations section. Meanwhile, Iowa has not adopted the EPA’s 2015 human health water quality standards, nor any state-level PFAS criteria for drinking water, even as other states move forward.
This inaction does not happen in a vacuum. Agriculture contributes roughly one-third of Iowa’s total economic output, and the industry’s lobby is among the most powerful in the country. The Union of Concerned Scientists found that agribusiness interests spent more than $500 million lobbying Congress on the federal farm bill between 2019 and 2023 alone - more than four times what public interest groups spent. Koch Industries, which operates a $3.6 billion fertilizer production facility in Iowa and has deep stakes in agrichemical manufacturing, spent over $11 million lobbying Congress in 2024 and contributed nearly $49 million in that election cycle. The company’s affiliated Americans for Prosperity network has also been a major funder of Iowa political campaigns.
The result is a predictable legislative pattern: public health is not part of the equation when agricultural policy is set. As one Iowa farmer diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma put it, the question - “could it be ag?” - lingers for too many Iowa families without a clear answer from their government.
This is not about vilifying farmers, many of whom are themselves victims of the same contaminated water and air. It is about accountability: for the industrial interests that profit from lax environmental standards, and for the elected officials who allow it to continue. Iowa’s environmental monitoring networks are underfunded. Manure application from factory farms - Iowa has two-and-a-half times more concentrated animal feeding operations than the next highest state - is insufficiently regulated. Existing laws are not enforced.
The researchers who produced the March 2026 report did not ask for radical policy shifts. They asked for Iowa to comply with and enforce its current environmental laws - a modest starting point that our legislature has so far been unwilling to reach.
Iowa’s cancer crisis is not an act of nature. It is, in significant part, the consequence of policy choices made on behalf of powerful interests rather than the public. Iowans deserve better - and we should demand it.
Respectfully,
Lori R. Egan
Waukon
