I thought PAL was mostly just used in Europe. Is this the American industry standard as well?

No. NTSC is the standard throughout North America.

...and Japan, Korea, and many Central American countries---and Brazil's PAL is actually similar with NTSC, so NTSC cams are used there. Countries which have SECAM or MESECAM as their broadcast system also use PAL cams. Only use PAL (in N.A.) if you have a logical reason to do so.

Here's further MESECAM info from Andre.

Andre De Clercq writes: MESECAM (Middle East Secam) is not a broadcast standard but a VHS recording variant for the original SECAM recording concept.. It uses frequency shift for the "color under" information rather than the frequency devision concept originally used for SECAM recording. Because freq shift is being used for PAL and NTSC, the MESECAM method is far more compatible for building multistandard VCR's. There is a slight quality penalty involved, if compared to the original (and more complicated) SECAM recording system.