[Lifestyle] Lifestyle, chemicals and complacency may be fuelling rural Australia's prostate problem

[rlex]

 

When Dennis Box thinks of the men living in his small farming community, he loses count of those who have experienced prostate cancer, and he wonders why. 
The 68-year-old grain farmer from Northampton in Western Australia's Wheatbelt has survived Australia's most common male cancer, something he credits to early detection and regular health screenings.

Now Mr Box and his wife Alison wonder if prostate cancer is more prevalent in rural communities like theirs and what could be causing this. 

"I've been thinking about it for a long time, whether the rural blokes on the farm have more trouble with it than anyone else, or whether it's just one of those things with men these days," he said.

 

Mr Box said the pair contemplated factors like diet, genetics, lifestyle or his own personal exposure to agricultural chemicals, particularly during the "early days" of farming, before personal protective equipment and filtered airflow in drivers' machinery cabs were used by farmers.

He said in the early days of his farming in the 1970s, farmers handled chemicals frequently without protective equipment, a vast contrast to modern practices. 

"I drive the boom spray on the farm. I do all of the sprayings and have done since boom sprays came out, and before that with the old misters and stuff like that, so you were open to all of that … all open cabs," Mr Box said. 

"So all of these chemicals, do they build up in your body enough to come out one day down the track?

"It might not happen straight away, but in 40 years time it might break out and end up in a cancer like that. You really don't know what causes it.

"It's just something that the city blokes and the country blokes — it doesn't matter where you are — have to follow up and do your [prostate] tests."