Pesticides and human cancers

The potential for human carcinogenicity of almost all pesticides currently on the market has been poorly evaluated and is inadequately understood. Generating mechanistic data in both animal studies and epidemiology will play an increasingly important role in the future. Improved exposure assessment, in large prospective studies that generate reliable exposure-response data that focus on individual pesticide exposures are needed. One of the greatest opportunities to make more rapid progress will be to foster more multi-disciplinary collaborations between toxicologists and epidemiologists. Collaborations on molecular epidemiology investigations offers such opportunities to both toxicologists and epidemiologists that were not possible even a decade ago.