The Relation Between Paternal Occupational Exposure and Cancer in Children

The incidence of childhood cancer has been increasing nearly one percent per year for the past two decades. Leukemia and lymphoma are the most common types of childhood cancers. This study was performed to assess the relation between environmental factors (Hydrocarbon, agricultural toxin, insecticide) present in various occupations of parents and cancer in their children. This was a case–control, cross sectional study done on 78 children with leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and 78 healthy children as the control group between the years 2002 and 2005. Information was gathered via a questionnaire and analyzed by suitable software (chi-square test). There were 44.9% girls and 55.1% boys in the case group and most of them (29.6%) were in the 3-5 years age group. 57.7% of the fathers were farmers, 16.7% were either painters or were exposed to hydrocarbons and 6.4% were simple workers. Comparison of case and control group showed a significant difference between the fathers occupation in the two groups. This study identified that rate of malignancy in children whose father’s are painters, exposed to hydrocarbons and farmers are higher than others. Therefore people with these occupations should pay more attention and should be protected against risk factors.