Researchers from Massey University in Wellington New Zealand studied the death records of thousands of patients and found that those who had parents who were either poultry or cattle farmers died of cancers of the blood like non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, leukemia and multiple myeloma at 3X the rate of people who didn’t grow up on these kinds of farms.
The researchers think that exposure to multiple kinds of animal viruses early in life weakened the immune systems of the people and made them more susceptible to these kinds of cancers of the blood.
For those of you who did grow up on farms with poultry and or cattle on them, though even at 3X times the risk, the absolute risk of contracting these kinds of cancers is still small…..but, it does make sense now that this information is available, to call it to the attention of your physician, and let him or her know about these findings.
Curt Hendrix, M.S., C.C.N., C.N.S.
