Melanoma, a cancer most often associated with sun exposure and individual risk factors, appears to follow the contours of Pennsylvania’s agricultural landscape, according to a new analysis that highlights striking regional differences in incidence. Adults living in counties with more cultivated land and heavier herbicide use had significantly higher melanoma rates, even after researchers accounted for ultraviolet radiation and social vulnerability.

The study, published in November 2025 in JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics, identified a 15-county cluster in South Central Pennsylvania where melanoma incidence among adults ages 50 years and older was 57% higher than in the rest of the state. Counties with larger shares of cultivated acreage and herbicide-treated land consistently showed higher rates, suggesting that agricultural practices may contribute to geographic disparities in melanoma risk.

Melanoma incidence in the United States has tripled since the mid-1970s. Although advances in treatment have improved survival, the disease is still expected to claim thousands of lives this year. Ultraviolet radiation is the leading environmental risk factor, but studies of outdoor workers, including those in agriculture, have produced mixed results. That inconsistency has fueled interest in whether farming-related exposures, such as pesticides, may play a role alongside sun exposure.

To examine that question at the population level, a team of researchers at Penn State College of Medicine conducted an ecologic analysis using county-level data from across Pennsylvania. The team analyzed invasive melanoma incidence from 2017 through 2021 among adults 50 years and older and paired those data with measures of agricultural land use, pesticide application, ambient ultraviolet radiation and socioeconomic vulnerability.

Using geospatial clustering techniques, the researchers identified a statistically significant melanoma hot spot spanning 15 counties in South Central Pennsylvania. Eight of those counties are designated as metropolitan, challenging the assumption that agriculture-related cancer risks are confined to rural areas. Compared with counties outside the cluster, those within it had nearly three times more cultivated land and more than double the proportion of herbicide-treated acreage.

In statistical models adjusted for ultraviolet radiation and social vulnerability, each 10% increase in cultivated land corresponded to a 14% increase in melanoma incidence. A roughly 9% increase in herbicide-treated acreage was associated with a similar 14% rise. Herbicides showed the strongest and most consistent association, while smaller positive associations were also observed for insecticide-, fungicide- and manure-treated land.

The authors noted that the entire high-incidence cluster falls within the 28-county catchment area of the Penn State Cancer Institute. That alignment, they wrote, creates an opportunity to integrate research, outreach and prevention efforts in a region with elevated melanoma burden.

Because the study used an ecologic design, it cannot establish cause and effect or assess individual-level exposures, the authors cautioned. The analysis also could not account for personal behaviors, genetic risk or direct measures of pesticide exposure. Still, the findings add to a growing body of literature linking agricultural practices, particularly pesticide use, with melanoma risk in farming regions.

Taken together, the results support a broader One Health approach to cancer control, one that considers how environmental, occupational and behavioral factors intersect. For agricultural regions such as South Central Pennsylvania, the authors suggest melanoma prevention strategies may need to extend beyond sun protection alone to include safer pesticide practices, environmental monitoring and community-based education tailored to populations affected by agricultural exposure.

Several faculty groups have denounced the Trump administration’s efforts to obtain information about Jewish professors, staff and students at the University of Pennsylvania – including personal emails, phone numbers and home addresses – as government abuse with “ominous historical overtones”.

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is demanding the university turn over names and personal information about Jewish members of the Penn community as part of the administration’s stated goal to combat antisemitism on campuses. But some Jewish faculty and staff have condemned the government’s demand as “a visceral threat to the safety of those who would find themselves identified because compiling and turning over to the government ‘lists of Jews’ conjures a terrifying history”, according to a press release put out by the groups’ lawyers.

The EEOC sued Penn in November over the university’s refusal to fully comply with its demands. On Tuesday, the American Association of University Professors’ national and Penn chapters, the university’s Jewish Law Students Association and its Association of Senior and Emeritus Faculty, and the American Academy of Jewish Research filed a motion in federal court to intervene in the case.

“These requests would require Penn to create and turn over a centralized registry of Jewish students, faculty, and staff – a profoundly invasive and dangerous demand that intrudes deeply into the freedoms of association, religion, speech, and privacy enshrined in the First Amendment,” the groups argued.

“We are entering territory that should shock every single one of us,” said Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of the Democracy Defenders Fund on a press call. The fund is representing the faculty groups along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and the firm Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin and Schiller. “That kind of information – however purportedly benign the excuses given for it – can be put to the most dangerous misuse. This is an abuse of government power that drags us back to some of the darkest chapters in our history.”

The EEOC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The University of Pennsylvania was among dozens of US universities to come under federal investigation over alleged antisemitism in the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza. In response, the university established a taskforce to study antisemitism, implemented a series of measures and shared hundreds of pages of documents to comply with government demands.

But the university refused to comply with the EEOC’s July subpoena for personal information of Jewish faculty, students and staff, or those affiliated with Jewish organizations who had not given their consent, as well as the names of individuals who had participated in confidential listening sessions or received a survey by the university’s antisemitism taskforce. A university spokesperson said in November that “violating their privacy and trust is antithetical to ensuring Penn’s Jewish community feels protected and safe”. Instead, the university offered to inform all its employees of the EEOC investigation, inviting those interested to contact the agency directly.

But that was not enough for the commission, which brought the university to court to seek to enforce the subpoena.

“The EEOC remains steadfast in its commitment to combatting workplace antisemitism and seeks to identify employees who may have experienced antisemitic harassment. Unfortunately, the employer continues to refuse to identify members of its workforce who may have been subjected to this unlawful conduct,” the EEOC chair, Andrea Lucas, said in a statement at the time. “An employer’s obstruction of efforts to identify witnesses and victims undermines the EEOC’s ability to investigate harassment.”

The EEOC request prompted widespread alarm and condemnation among Jewish faculty, and earned rebukes from the university’s Hillel and other Jewish groups.

Steven Weitzman, a professor with Penn’s religious studies department who also served on the university’s antisemitism taskforce, said that the mere request for such lists “instills a sense of vulnerability among Jews” and that the government cannot guarantee that the information it collects won’t fall “into the wrong hands or have unintended consequences”.

“Part of what sets off alarm bells for people like me is a history of people using Jewish lists against Jews,” he said . “The Nazi campaign against Jews depended on institutions like universities handing over information about their Jewish members to the authorities.”

“As Jewish study scholars, we know well the dangers of collecting such information,” said Beth Wenger, who teaches Jewish history at Penn.

It’s not the first time the EEOC’s efforts to fight antisemitism have caused alarm among Jewish faculty. Last spring, the commission texted the personal phones of employees of Barnard College, the women’s school affiliated with Columbia University, linking to a survey that asked respondents whether they identified as Jewish or Israeli.