Dunklin County, Missouri, sits along the western border of the Bootheel and boasts the state's biggest cotton harvest. It also ranks among the state's "top 10 counties with the highest rates of colon cancer," Investigate Midwest reports.
Dunklin County resident Bobby Bibbs is a living example. "She discovered she had cancer in her colon in December 2023, which then metastasized to her liver, making it a stage four diagnosis," Cox writes. Bibbs told reporters, "There are so many (cases) where we are from. It’s got to be coming from somewhere.”
Like her neighbors, Bibbs lives surrounded by crops sprayed with pesticides. Cox writes, "Multiple scientific studies have explored a connection between pesticide use and cancer, pointing to a silent public health crisis hitting rural communities particularly hard."
For tightly-knit rural communities, a cancer diagnosis is shared along the grapevine, as are concerns that the area's only hospital closed in 2018. Investigate Midwest reports, "For cancer care, folks from Dunklin County often travel an hour to Jonesboro, Arkansas, or an hour-and-a-half to Cape Girardeau in Missouri."
Bootheel residents are often hemmed into farming to make a living. "As manufacturing jobs moved out of many places in the Bootheel, [towns] felt the economic sting," the article explains. "One industry that remains is agriculture."
While many area farmers see using agricultural chemicals as a way to protect their livelihoods, most are aware of the potential dangers. Jan McElwrath who has lived in Dunklin County most of her life, told Investigate Midwest, "We’re surrounded by agriculture. We recognize (chemicals) as a risk, but our economy here is very dependent on agriculture.”
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