Iowa’s high cancer rate linked to nitrate, pesticides, PFAS and radon, new report finds

By Nina B. Elkadi | Sentient Media | March 25, 2026

Read the full article by Nina B. Elkadi (Sentient Media)

"When Iowa resident Chris Henning was diagnosed with cancer in 2019, her youngest sister and brother-in-law had already died of cancer 13 years earlier and her father had been treated for lung cancer. Since her diagnosis, another one of her sisters died of cancer and two more women in her family have received cancer diagnoses. But testing indicated that the sisters’ breast cancers are not due to family genetics, she tells Sentient.

After stints in Des Moines and Arizona, Henning now lives on a farm in Greene County, Iowa, just half a mile from the family farm where she grew up. Over the past 25 years or so of familial cancer diagnoses, Henning has ruminated on what her family shares besides genes. As a kid, she remembers carrying little jugs of herbicide to spray the milkweeds and glancing up as planes carrying fungicides sprayed overhead.

Like Henning, many Iowans are personally affected by — and have questions about — rising cancer rates in the state. Today, the Iowa Environmental Council and The Harkin Institute released a report addressing the issue, the result of painstaking work and 16 cancer listening sessions in all corners of the state. “Iowans deserve to know what risks we are facing,” the authors of the report write."