Soft tissue sarcomas in agriculture and forestry workers.

The National Cancer Register maintained by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS) was used to investigate the relative risks of soft tissue sarcomas among farmers, agricultural workers, and related occupational groups. The relative risk for the group as a whole was 1.15 (95% confidence limits 0.83-1.59). One of the four subgroups (which comprises farmers, farm managers, and market gardeners) experienced a relative risk of 1.7 which just achieves significance at the 5% level (95% confidence limits 1.00-2.88). The risks in the other three subgroups were respectively 1.0 (agricultural workers, 003), 0.7 (gardeners and groundsmen, 005), and 1.0 (foresters and woodmen, 006). No attempt has been made in this study to determine exposure to phenoxy herbicides in cases or controls. The significance of these findings is discussed.