A chemical stew for East African farmers: An epidemiological study of Kenyan highland farmers and cancers of the nose and throat

The hypothesis of this thesis is that there is a relationship between use of agro-chemicals by Kenyan farmers and the high rate of nose and throat cancers experienced by this population. After identifying suspected key factors and weaving together their historically documented confluences, the method of Rules of Inference in Epidemiology is applied to the hypothesis to evaluate indicators of a causal relationship. The factors identified as indicators of this causal relationship include (1) physical isolation of tribes, (2) colonial plantation farms in areas of traditional tribal lands, (3) squatters (Kenyan men required to work as farm laborers), (4) agro-chemical introduction/use and (5) occurrence of nose and throat cancers in men. These factors interwoven within a time-frame and observed with the detachment of several decades affords the researcher a perspective not previously attainable.