CHARLOTTETOWN — Health officials in Prince Edward Island are analyzing the province's cancer numbers for the first time in years thanks partly to concerns that rates are climbing in at least one heavily farmed area.

Dr. Ron Matsusaki, an emergency room physician in the rural county of West Prince, says farm communities in his region are like laboratories for rare and aggressive cancers that are occurring much too often.

Matsusaki, who was a candidate for the Green party in the last federal election, says he believes the intensive use of agricultural chemicals on the province's potato fields is a principle cause of rising cancer rates.

"I grew up in Hamilton, Ont., and I have lived in many places including rural Alabama and Texas, but I have never seen anything that comes remotely close to the cancer I see here in West Prince," Matsusaki says.

"People are dying of cancer in their 30s, 40s and early 50s. In a population of less than 14,000, we had four children who were diagnosed with cancer in a single year. We've had three brain cancers within the last year."

Provincial epidemiologist Dr. Linda van Til says there are rising numbers of cancer cases in P.E.I., as there are in other parts of Canada. She suspects the rates are magnified on the Island because of the province's aging population.

"P.E.I. has one of the highest percentages of seniors (in Canada) in its population," she says.

Nevertheless, for the first time in nine years, the province is going to analyze cancer cases recorded with the Island's cancer registry to see if there are unusual trends or clusters that should be investigated.

"It has been quite some years since we put out a provincial report on rates in P.E.I," van Til says, noting the last report was in 1997.

"We have been relying on the Canadian reports for quite some time. So this fall, we are going to publish the rates for P.E.I. We are taking a harder look at that, partly because of the interest that has been generated."

For Noralee Harper, the mother of a boy recovering from a rare form of cancer, an analysis of the numbers is just an academic exercise.

Harper is personally convinced that her four-year-old son's battle with B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma was triggered by the heavy use of pesticides on potato fields near the family's former West Prince home.

Harper says their house was on land that sloped down from a large potato field. She believes agricultural chemicals used on the potato crop leaked into well water, blew into the house through open windows and was carried in on clothes that had dried on the line.

When her son, Brett, was diagnosed with the lymphoma - a form of cancer that is linked to chemical exposure - he had large tumours in his abdomen and chest as well as cancer cells floating in fluid around his lungs.

"We totally blame it on the pesticides in that field," says Harper.

"I'm convinced the potato fields, and what the farmers are putting on those fields, are killing us."

The Harpers have moved since their son's diagnosis. They are still in West Prince, but there are no potato fields near their new home.

Brett Harper is now five and thanks to intensive chemotherapy, appears to have beaten the cancer.

"It's a miracle he's still with us," his mother says.

Matsusaki says it's time for P.E.I. to wake up to the threat posed by the widespread use of chemicals in farming - the province's largest industry.

When he ran for the Green party, Matsusaki focused exclusively on the cancer issue, urging Islanders to consider organic farming.

He says the province could become a model for the world as it re-creates the environmentally pure conditions that are portrayed so famously in the Anne of Green Gables books.

"P.E.I. would once again become the wonderland that Lucy Maude Montgomery wrote about," he says of the 19th-century author. "It would become the hidden pearl in a technocratic society."

Dawn Binns, executive director of the Canadian Cancer Society on P.E.I., says the society is anxious to see the cancer numbers now being collected by the government.

She says they will be peer reviewed by experts hired by the society with knowledge in environmental and occupational carcinogens.

Binns says there are many factors that play into cancer occurrences, but science is proving that some types of chemicals do impact human health.

She doubts Island farmers will give up on the use of agricultural chemicals anytime soon, but she says the cancer society may be able to pinpoint ways to better protect individuals and communities.

"We need really good information on what the cancer rates and incidences are telling us about P.E.I.," says Binns.

"From there, we will be able to come to a better understanding of what else we have to do."