washingtonpost on Instagram: "Mackenzie Dryden’s happiest childhood memories are of running barefoot through the sunlit corn fields of her hometown. But when she…"
Mackenzie Dryden’s happiest childhood memories are of running barefoot through the sunlit corn fields of her hometown. But when she was diagnosed with cancer 2½ years ago at 18, a disturbing thought began to take hold.Could something in the land she loved have made her sick?Dryden went to social media for answers, and stumbled upon a deeper mystery: Within just two years, four other recent graduates from her high school — home to only 500 students — had also been diagnosed with advanced cancers.Cancer rates among young adults in the Corn Belt, a patchwork of golden fields and straight-line highways stretching across the heart of the Midwest, are rising more rapidly than in the country as a whole, a Washington Post data analysis reveals for the first time.Read more at the link in our bio.
