Cancer-causing viruses in poultry may explain increased risks of death from liver and pancreatic cancers.
Poultry Exposure Tied to Liver and Pancreatic Cancer
Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.
Thousands of Americans continue to die from asbestos exposure decades after many uses were banned, because the cancers can take years to show up. We’re now in the so-called “third wave of asbestos-related disease.” The first wave was in the asbestos miners, which started in the 1920s. The second phase was in the workers—the shipbuilders and construction workers that used the stuff in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Now, as “buildings constructed with asbestos over the past six decades begin to age and deteriorate,” not only are workers at risk, but “[p]otential also exists for serious environmental exposure to asbestos among residents, tenants and users of these buildings, such as school children, office workers, maintenance workers, and the general public.” The [CDC], the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the [EPA] have projected…over the next 30 years approximately 1,000 cases of mesothelioma and lung cancer will occur among persons in the United States exposed to asbestos in school buildings as school children.” But, it all started with the workers. As one internal industry memo callously put it, “If [you’ve] enjoyed a good life while working with asbestos products why not die from it.”
To see if something is carcinogenic, you study those who have the most exposure. That’s how we learned about the potential cancer-causing dangers of asbestos, and that’s how we’re learning about the potential cancer-causing dangers of poultry viruses. For years, I’ve talked about the excess mortality in poultry workers associated with these wart-causing chicken cancer viruses that may be transmitted to those in the general population handling fresh or frozen chicken. Last year, I talked about the largest study to date at the time, confirming “the findings of three other…studies that workers in poultry slaughtering and processing plants have increased risk of dying from certain cancers,” and adding death from penis cancer to the risks linked to poultry exposure. That was looking at 20,000 poultry workers. Well, we have yet another study, looking at 30,000.
The purpose of the study was to “test the hypothesis that exposure to poultry [cancer-causing] viruses that widely occurs occupationally in poultry workers [not to mention the general population] may be associated with increased risks of deaths from liver and pancreatic cancers…” They found that those who slaughter chickens have about 9 times the odds of both pancreatic cancer and liver cancer.
Just to put that in context, the most carefully studied risk factor for pancreatic cancer, one of our deadliest cancers, is cigarette smoking. Even if you smoke for more than 50 years, though, you only about double your odds of pancreatic cancer. Those that slaughter poultry appear to have nearly nine times the odds.
For liver cancer, it’s more alcohol. Those that consume more than a four drinks a day have triple the odds of liver cancer, whereas poultry slaughtering appears to increase one’s odds nine-fold.
There are diseases unique to the meat industry, like the newly described “salami brusher’s disease” that affects those whose job it is to wire brush off the white mold that naturally grows on salami for eight hours a day, but most diseases suffered by meat workers are more universal.
The reason the connection between asbestos and cancer was so easy to nail down is that asbestos caused a particularly unusual cancer, which was virtually unknown until there was widespread asbestos mining and industrial use. But the pancreatic cancer one might get from handling chicken is the same pancreatic cancer one might get smoking cigarettes, so it’s more difficult to tease out a cause-and-effect-relationship. So, don’t expect to see an asbestos-type ban on Kentucky Fried Chicken anytime soon.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- E. S. Johnson, M. F. Faramawi, M. Sall, K. M. Choi. Cancer and noncancer mortality among American seafood workers. J Epidemiol 2011 21(2):204-210.
- E. S. Johnson. Cancer mortality in workers employed in cattle, pigs, and sheep slaughtering and processing plants. Environ Int 2011 37(5):950 - 959.
- A. 't Mannetje, A. Eng, N. Pearce. Farming, growing up on a farm, and haematological cancer mortality. Occup Environ Med 2012 69(2):126 - 132.
- K.-M. Choi, E. S. Johnson. Occupational exposure assessment using antibody levels: Exposure to avian leukosis/sarcoma viruses in the poultry industry. Int J Environ Health Res 2011 21(4):306 - 316.
- K.-M. Choi, E. S. Johnson. Industrial hygiene assessment of reticuloendotheliosis viruses exposure in the poultry industry. Int Arch Occup Environ Health 2011 84(4):375 - 382.
- D. Neasham, A. Sifi, K. R. Nielsen, K. Overvad, O. Raaschou-Nielsen, A. Tjonneland, A. Barricarte, C. A. González, C. Navarro, L. R. Suarez, R. C. Travis, T. Key, J. Linseisen, R. Kaaks, P. Crosignani, F. Berrino, S. Rosso, A. Mattiello, R. C. H. Vermeulen, H. B. Bueno-de-Mesquita, G. Berglund, J. Manjer, S. Zackrisson, G. Hallmans, B. Malmer, S. Bingham, K. T. Khaw, M. M. Bergmann, H. Boeing, A. Trichopoulou, G. Masala, R. Tumino, E. Lund, N. Slimani, P. Ferrari, P. Boffetta, P. Vineis, E. Riboli. Occupation and risk of lymphoma: A multicentre prospective cohort study (EPIC). Occup Environ Med 2011 68(1):77 - 81.
- E. S. Johnson, H. Ndetan, M. J. Felini, M. F. Faramawi, K. P. Singh, K.-M. Choi, R. Qualls-Hampton. Mortality in workers employed in pig abattoirs and processing plants. Environ. Res. 2011 111(6):871 - 876.
- S. R. Jónsson, R. S. LaRue, M. D. Stenglein, S. C. Fahrenkrug, V. Andrésdóttir, R. S. Harris. The restriction of zoonotic PERV transmission by human APOBEC3G. PLoS ONE 2007 2(9):e893.
- Y. Takeuchi, J. Fishman. Long life with or without PERV. Xenotransplantation 2010 17(6):429 - 430.
- S. M. Holzbauer, A. S. DeVries, J. J. Sejvar, C. H. Lees, J. Adjemian, J. H. McQuiston, C. Medus, C. A. Lexau, J. R. Harris, S. E. Recuenco, E. D. Belay, J. F. Howell, B. F. Buss, M. Hornig, J. D. Gibbins, S. E. Brueck, K. E. Smith, R. N. Danila, W. I. Lipkin, D. H. Lachance, P. J. B. Dyck, R. Lynfield. Epidemiologic investigation of immune-mediated polyradiculoneuropathy among abattoir workers exposed to porcine brain. PLoS ONE 2010 5(3):e9782.
- M. Lotti, L. Bergamo, B. Murer. Occupational toxicology of asbestos-related malignancies. Clin Toxicol (Phila) 2010 48(6):485 - 496.
- M. Felini, E. Johnson, N. Preacely, V. Sarda, H. Ndetan, S. Bangara. A pilot case-cohort study of liver and pancreatic cancers in poultry workers. Ann Epidemiol 2011 21(10):755 - 766.
- S. M. Lynch, A. Vrieling, J. H. Lubin, P. Kraft, J. B. Mendelsohn, P. Hartge, F. Canzian, E. Steplowski, A. A. Arslan, M. Gross, K. Helzlsouer, E. J. Jacobs, A. LaCroix, G. Petersen, W. Zheng, D. Albanes, L. Amundadottir, S. A. Bingham, P. Boffetta, M.-C. Boutron-Ruault, S. J. Chanock, S. Clipp, R. N. Hoover, K. Jacobs, K. C. Johnson, C. Kooperberg, J. Luo, C. Messina, D. Palli, A. V. Patel, E. Riboli, X.-O. Shu, L. R. Suarez, G. Thomas, A. Tjonneland, G. S. Tobias, E. Tong, D. Trichopoulos, J. Virtamo, W. Ye, K. Yu, A. Zeleniuch-Jacquette, H. B. Bueno-de-Mesquita, R. Z. Stolzenberg-Solomon. Cigarette smoking and pancreatic cancer: A pooled analysis from the pancreatic cancer cohort consortium. Am. J. Epidemiol. 2009 170(4):403 - 413.
- J.-M. Yuan, S. Govindarajan, K. Arakawa, M. C. Yu. Synergism of alcohol, diabetes, and viral hepatitis on the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma in blacks and whites in the U.S. Cancer 2004 101(5):1009 - 1017.
- M. Marvisi, L. Balzarini, C. Mancini, P. Mouzakiti. A new type of Hypersensitivity Pneumonitis: Salami brusher's disease. Monaldi Arch Chest Dis 2012 77(1):35 - 37.
- Swine abattoir workers exposed to aerosolized porcine brains: Will we ever learn? Int J Occup Environ Health 2010 16(1):101.
- R. Weiner, D. Rees, F. J. Lunga, M. A. Felix. Third wave of asbestos-related disease from secondary use of asbestos. A case report from industry. S. Afr. Med. J. 1994 84(3):158 - 160.
- D. H. Lachance, V. A. Lennon, S. J. Pittock, J. A. Tracy, K. N. Krecke, K. K. Amrami, E. M. Poeschla, R. Orenstein, B. W. Scheithauer, J. J. Sejvar, S. Holzbauer, A. S. Devries, P. J. B. Dyck. An outbreak of neurological autoimmunity with polyradiculoneuropathy in workers exposed to aerosolised porcine neural tissue: A descriptive study. Lancet Neurol 2010 9(1):55 - 66.
- J. A. Tracy, P. J. B. Dyck. Auto-immune polyradiculoneuropathy and a novel IgG biomarker in workers exposed to aerosolized porcine brain. J. Peripher. Nerv. Syst. 2011 16(Suppl 1):34 - 37.
- L. Proietti, L. Spicuzza, A. Di Maria, R. Polosa, E. S. Torres, V. Asero, G. U. Di Maria. Non-occupational malignant pleural mesothelioma due to asbestos and non-asbestos fibres. Monaldi Arch Chest Dis. 2006 65(4):210 - 216.
- Environmental Working Group. 2004. The Asbestos Epidemic in America.
- P. J. Landrigan. The third wave of asbestos disease: exposure to asbestos in place. Public health control. Introduction. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 1991 643:xv-xvi.
Thanks to Ellen Reid and Shane Barrett for their Keynote help.
Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.
Thousands of Americans continue to die from asbestos exposure decades after many uses were banned, because the cancers can take years to show up. We’re now in the so-called “third wave of asbestos-related disease.” The first wave was in the asbestos miners, which started in the 1920s. The second phase was in the workers—the shipbuilders and construction workers that used the stuff in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Now, as “buildings constructed with asbestos over the past six decades begin to age and deteriorate,” not only are workers at risk, but “[p]otential also exists for serious environmental exposure to asbestos among residents, tenants and users of these buildings, such as school children, office workers, maintenance workers, and the general public.” The [CDC], the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the [EPA] have projected…over the next 30 years approximately 1,000 cases of mesothelioma and lung cancer will occur among persons in the United States exposed to asbestos in school buildings as school children.” But, it all started with the workers. As one internal industry memo callously put it, “If [you’ve] enjoyed a good life while working with asbestos products why not die from it.”
To see if something is carcinogenic, you study those who have the most exposure. That’s how we learned about the potential cancer-causing dangers of asbestos, and that’s how we’re learning about the potential cancer-causing dangers of poultry viruses. For years, I’ve talked about the excess mortality in poultry workers associated with these wart-causing chicken cancer viruses that may be transmitted to those in the general population handling fresh or frozen chicken. Last year, I talked about the largest study to date at the time, confirming “the findings of three other…studies that workers in poultry slaughtering and processing plants have increased risk of dying from certain cancers,” and adding death from penis cancer to the risks linked to poultry exposure. That was looking at 20,000 poultry workers. Well, we have yet another study, looking at 30,000.
The purpose of the study was to “test the hypothesis that exposure to poultry [cancer-causing] viruses that widely occurs occupationally in poultry workers [not to mention the general population] may be associated with increased risks of deaths from liver and pancreatic cancers…” They found that those who slaughter chickens have about 9 times the odds of both pancreatic cancer and liver cancer.
Just to put that in context, the most carefully studied risk factor for pancreatic cancer, one of our deadliest cancers, is cigarette smoking. Even if you smoke for more than 50 years, though, you only about double your odds of pancreatic cancer. Those that slaughter poultry appear to have nearly nine times the odds.
For liver cancer, it’s more alcohol. Those that consume more than a four drinks a day have triple the odds of liver cancer, whereas poultry slaughtering appears to increase one’s odds nine-fold.
There are diseases unique to the meat industry, like the newly described “salami brusher’s disease” that affects those whose job it is to wire brush off the white mold that naturally grows on salami for eight hours a day, but most diseases suffered by meat workers are more universal.
The reason the connection between asbestos and cancer was so easy to nail down is that asbestos caused a particularly unusual cancer, which was virtually unknown until there was widespread asbestos mining and industrial use. But the pancreatic cancer one might get from handling chicken is the same pancreatic cancer one might get smoking cigarettes, so it’s more difficult to tease out a cause-and-effect-relationship. So, don’t expect to see an asbestos-type ban on Kentucky Fried Chicken anytime soon.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- E. S. Johnson, M. F. Faramawi, M. Sall, K. M. Choi. Cancer and noncancer mortality among American seafood workers. J Epidemiol 2011 21(2):204-210.
- E. S. Johnson. Cancer mortality in workers employed in cattle, pigs, and sheep slaughtering and processing plants. Environ Int 2011 37(5):950 - 959.
- A. 't Mannetje, A. Eng, N. Pearce. Farming, growing up on a farm, and haematological cancer mortality. Occup Environ Med 2012 69(2):126 - 132.
- K.-M. Choi, E. S. Johnson. Occupational exposure assessment using antibody levels: Exposure to avian leukosis/sarcoma viruses in the poultry industry. Int J Environ Health Res 2011 21(4):306 - 316.
- K.-M. Choi, E. S. Johnson. Industrial hygiene assessment of reticuloendotheliosis viruses exposure in the poultry industry. Int Arch Occup Environ Health 2011 84(4):375 - 382.
- D. Neasham, A. Sifi, K. R. Nielsen, K. Overvad, O. Raaschou-Nielsen, A. Tjonneland, A. Barricarte, C. A. González, C. Navarro, L. R. Suarez, R. C. Travis, T. Key, J. Linseisen, R. Kaaks, P. Crosignani, F. Berrino, S. Rosso, A. Mattiello, R. C. H. Vermeulen, H. B. Bueno-de-Mesquita, G. Berglund, J. Manjer, S. Zackrisson, G. Hallmans, B. Malmer, S. Bingham, K. T. Khaw, M. M. Bergmann, H. Boeing, A. Trichopoulou, G. Masala, R. Tumino, E. Lund, N. Slimani, P. Ferrari, P. Boffetta, P. Vineis, E. Riboli. Occupation and risk of lymphoma: A multicentre prospective cohort study (EPIC). Occup Environ Med 2011 68(1):77 - 81.
- E. S. Johnson, H. Ndetan, M. J. Felini, M. F. Faramawi, K. P. Singh, K.-M. Choi, R. Qualls-Hampton. Mortality in workers employed in pig abattoirs and processing plants. Environ. Res. 2011 111(6):871 - 876.
- S. R. Jónsson, R. S. LaRue, M. D. Stenglein, S. C. Fahrenkrug, V. Andrésdóttir, R. S. Harris. The restriction of zoonotic PERV transmission by human APOBEC3G. PLoS ONE 2007 2(9):e893.
- Y. Takeuchi, J. Fishman. Long life with or without PERV. Xenotransplantation 2010 17(6):429 - 430.
- S. M. Holzbauer, A. S. DeVries, J. J. Sejvar, C. H. Lees, J. Adjemian, J. H. McQuiston, C. Medus, C. A. Lexau, J. R. Harris, S. E. Recuenco, E. D. Belay, J. F. Howell, B. F. Buss, M. Hornig, J. D. Gibbins, S. E. Brueck, K. E. Smith, R. N. Danila, W. I. Lipkin, D. H. Lachance, P. J. B. Dyck, R. Lynfield. Epidemiologic investigation of immune-mediated polyradiculoneuropathy among abattoir workers exposed to porcine brain. PLoS ONE 2010 5(3):e9782.
- M. Lotti, L. Bergamo, B. Murer. Occupational toxicology of asbestos-related malignancies. Clin Toxicol (Phila) 2010 48(6):485 - 496.
- M. Felini, E. Johnson, N. Preacely, V. Sarda, H. Ndetan, S. Bangara. A pilot case-cohort study of liver and pancreatic cancers in poultry workers. Ann Epidemiol 2011 21(10):755 - 766.
- S. M. Lynch, A. Vrieling, J. H. Lubin, P. Kraft, J. B. Mendelsohn, P. Hartge, F. Canzian, E. Steplowski, A. A. Arslan, M. Gross, K. Helzlsouer, E. J. Jacobs, A. LaCroix, G. Petersen, W. Zheng, D. Albanes, L. Amundadottir, S. A. Bingham, P. Boffetta, M.-C. Boutron-Ruault, S. J. Chanock, S. Clipp, R. N. Hoover, K. Jacobs, K. C. Johnson, C. Kooperberg, J. Luo, C. Messina, D. Palli, A. V. Patel, E. Riboli, X.-O. Shu, L. R. Suarez, G. Thomas, A. Tjonneland, G. S. Tobias, E. Tong, D. Trichopoulos, J. Virtamo, W. Ye, K. Yu, A. Zeleniuch-Jacquette, H. B. Bueno-de-Mesquita, R. Z. Stolzenberg-Solomon. Cigarette smoking and pancreatic cancer: A pooled analysis from the pancreatic cancer cohort consortium. Am. J. Epidemiol. 2009 170(4):403 - 413.
- J.-M. Yuan, S. Govindarajan, K. Arakawa, M. C. Yu. Synergism of alcohol, diabetes, and viral hepatitis on the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma in blacks and whites in the U.S. Cancer 2004 101(5):1009 - 1017.
- M. Marvisi, L. Balzarini, C. Mancini, P. Mouzakiti. A new type of Hypersensitivity Pneumonitis: Salami brusher's disease. Monaldi Arch Chest Dis 2012 77(1):35 - 37.
- Swine abattoir workers exposed to aerosolized porcine brains: Will we ever learn? Int J Occup Environ Health 2010 16(1):101.
- R. Weiner, D. Rees, F. J. Lunga, M. A. Felix. Third wave of asbestos-related disease from secondary use of asbestos. A case report from industry. S. Afr. Med. J. 1994 84(3):158 - 160.
- D. H. Lachance, V. A. Lennon, S. J. Pittock, J. A. Tracy, K. N. Krecke, K. K. Amrami, E. M. Poeschla, R. Orenstein, B. W. Scheithauer, J. J. Sejvar, S. Holzbauer, A. S. Devries, P. J. B. Dyck. An outbreak of neurological autoimmunity with polyradiculoneuropathy in workers exposed to aerosolised porcine neural tissue: A descriptive study. Lancet Neurol 2010 9(1):55 - 66.
- J. A. Tracy, P. J. B. Dyck. Auto-immune polyradiculoneuropathy and a novel IgG biomarker in workers exposed to aerosolized porcine brain. J. Peripher. Nerv. Syst. 2011 16(Suppl 1):34 - 37.
- L. Proietti, L. Spicuzza, A. Di Maria, R. Polosa, E. S. Torres, V. Asero, G. U. Di Maria. Non-occupational malignant pleural mesothelioma due to asbestos and non-asbestos fibres. Monaldi Arch Chest Dis. 2006 65(4):210 - 216.
- Environmental Working Group. 2004. The Asbestos Epidemic in America.
- P. J. Landrigan. The third wave of asbestos disease: exposure to asbestos in place. Public health control. Introduction. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 1991 643:xv-xvi.
Thanks to Ellen Reid and Shane Barrett for their Keynote help.
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Poultry Exposure Tied to Liver and Pancreatic Cancer
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Content URLDoctor's Note
I’ve addressed this topic before. See:
- Poultry & Penis Cancer
- Wart Cancer Viruses in Food
- Chicken Dioxins, Viruses, or Antibiotics?
- Poultry Exposure & Neurological Disease
It’s ironic that the meat industry wants to add viruses to meat (see Viral Meat Spray) to combat fecal bacterial contamination. But I’d take that over their other bright idea any day (see Maggot Meat Spray).
A human wart virus, HPV, can be combatted with green tea (see Treating Genital Warts with Green Tea), and plant-based diets in general (see Why Might Vegetarians Have Less HPV?).
Although workers with the most poultry exposure appear to suffer the greatest excess mortality, increased deaths from cancer are also found in other slaughterhouse workers. For more on that, see Eating Outside Our Kingdom.
For further context, check out my associated blog posts: How Animal Proteins May Trigger Autoimmune Disease, and Handling Poultry Tied to Liver/Pancreatic Cancer.
Correction: at 3:16 I say “lung” cancer. As shown on the slide, and in the transcript, I meant to say “liver” cancer–sorry about that!
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