LAT: Hot on Parkinson's Trail (pesticide exposure as a cause)

Hot on Parkinson's Trail
Scientists have amassed evidence that long-term exposure to toxic compounds, especially pesticides, can trigger the neurological disease.

By Marla Cone, Times Staff Writer


....Scientists have amassed a growing body of evidence that long-term exposure to toxic compounds, particularly pesticides, can destroy neurons and trigger Parkinson's in some people.

So far, they have implicated several pesticides that cause Parkinson's symptoms in animals. But hundreds of agricultural and industrial chemicals probably play a role, they believe.

Researchers don't use the word "cause" when linking environmental exposures to a disease. Instead, epidemiologists look for clusters and patterns in people, and neurobiologists test theories in animals. If their findings are repeatedly consistent, that is as close to proving cause and effect as they get.

Now, with Parkinson's, this medical detective work has edged closer to proving the case than with almost any other human ailment. In most patients, scientists say, Parkinson's is a disease with environmental origins.

Scientists are "definitely there, beyond a doubt, in showing that environmental toxicants have to be involved" in some cases of Parkinson's disease, said Freya Kamel, an epidemiologist with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences who has documented a high rate of neurological problems in farmers who use pesticides....


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-parkinsons27nov27,0,6405452.story?coll=la-home-headlines&track=morenews

Organophosphate Pesticides are also nerve toxins. Like Chemical weapons.

And some of the chemicals that have been banned for use in pesticides end up in proprietary fragrance compounds that people happily douse themselves with and wash their clothes in. Who needs chemical weapons? We're perfectly willing to poison ourselves.

a link between the chemicals they put on their fields and their diseases. interesting, and tragic!

Described a logical trail like this: Started with some users of a designer-heroin (heroin-like) compound were getting instant, advanced Parkinson's. Nobody had ever seen anything cause Parkinson's, so they researched the cases for whatever they could get that would reveal something about Parkinson's. The researchers discovered it was a particular batch that the guy cooking it had made. Particular compound in the batch instead of the designer heroin. That compound broke down into another in the body, and that secondary one was the one causing the damage to the cells in the brain, resulting in Parkinson's symptoms. But then, they discovered that the dangerous compound was nearly identical to an herbicide/pesticide used in Canada. They looked at the distribution of that chemical's usage in Canada, and it mapped directly onto the distribution of Parkinson's in Canada. I've often wondered if Michael J. Fox (the "Family Ties" one, not the "Lost" one) grew up in one of those areas, and whether it caused his early-onset Parkinson's.

I guess I would say that I'm astonished that this is being portrayed as a new discovery. I could swear that NOVA was at least ten years ago.

Should have looked it up first. The summary doesn't list the pesticide connection, but I remember it very clearly in the program. They showed distribution maps. Has this been covered up since? Was this just too hot to go further in the MSM?


Here's the info:

Case of the Frozen Addict (The)

In July 1982, a 42-year-old addict in a San Jose, California jail became paralyzed—unable to move or talk. His symptoms, caused by a bad batch of synthetic heroin, were indistinguishable from those associated with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative nerve disorder that strikes the elderly. NOVA traces the story of a "designer" drug which could lead to a major medical breakthrough.

Original broadcast date: 02/18/86
Topic: medicine/disease & research

combined have a much more devastating effect than one, or the other.

The original substance became a different, toxic substance once metabolized.

Pesticides are used on golf courses. My mom's parkinsons was diagnosed some time after she joined a women's golf league and played weekly. I worked for three years as grounds keeping crew on a golf course before having two heart attacks. That stuff is applied with sprayers attached to a tractor. It doesn't all end up on the ground. A good part of it is blown into the environment. I would like to see an epidemiology study of patients who live near golf courses.

that golf courses are toxic -- and a study such as you suggest would be interesting, and valuable.

and danced around it the subject to avoid libel. The L.A. Times is about about brave as most other invertebrates. Like duh already, who could have dreamed complex non-biodegradable manufactured substances could be harmful to most life forms :shrug:

We are all swimming in the whole mess and it's getting worse, another legacy of our Oil Emperor God we have enshrined as the single most important answer.

but it must be a long wait for those who have it or first get it in this time. I don't know how much learning about causes also helps with treatments.

The article notes 1817 as the time it was first described. MS was first diagnosed soon after that. Wonder what was going on then as far as any toxin exposure or change. There are surely multiple triggers for the diseases, but I was hoping the article might talk about the ratio of increase in cases of disease and use of these toxins.

I wonder if smoking has the same inverse relationship with other disorders that might be triggered by these toxins, if it is that specific or if nicotine is just broadly neuroprotective.

May the puzzle pieces fit soon.

Always a curiousity to me is the blind sighted , who prefer medical answers to toxics instead of not making them.

Europe is way ahead of the U.S. in eliminating toxics as much as possible.

In Amerika the Drs reign, and the answer is drugs and surgery, not eliminating toxics sad

I was just reading that DU thread yesterday:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1950620

And that got me to wondering about my veggies and fruit, which I cannot afford to buy organic. I would buy organic if I could, just like everybody else... Hell, nobody wants to buy pre-poisoned food! (What I do with it after I buy it is another story....)

I did some quick googles... the info appears to be old (even more disconcerting, since you KNOW things are worse now).

Top Produce to Buy Organic
Latest list of foods highly contaminated with pesticides.
Therefore this is a list of the produce we should ALWAYS buy organic or skip altogether.
http://www.deliciousorganics.com/Controversies/toptobuyorg.htm

Report Card: Pesticides in Produce
http://www.foodnews.org/reportcard.php

Forbidden Fruit: Illegal Pesticides in the US Food Supply
http://www.ewg.org/reports/Fruit/chapter2.html

10 Fruits and Vegetables to Buy Organic
http://www.checnet.org/healthehouse/education/quicklist-detail.asp?Main_ID=241

And let's throw a Fish List in, while we're here...

Safe Fish CHEC List For Children, Teens and All Women of Child-bearing Age
http://www.checnet.org/healthehouse/education/quicklist-detail.asp?Main_ID=716

thank you! And I relented and bought conventional celery for my turkey soup yesterday. damn.... :(

First, I believe there is a connection, but even if there isn't a connection with THIS disease and this particular class of toxins, we pretty much know that as much toxins as are in our environment, there's going to be some physical damage going on somewhere. After all, DDT nearly killed off our national bird; it would be folly to think we humans are somehow immune to toxins, even if there's not a whiff of so-called proof anywhere.

That said, if our government and employers and suppliers can't or won't keep our environment safe, so that it causes some disease directly and weakens our bodies so that we are more susceptible to certain diseases and conditions (I think certain pollutions have been linked to at least some asthma), then they goddamn well better give us access to whatever healthcare we are going to end up needing as a result.

Otherwise that's yet another way to privatize the profits and socialize the costs of government and corporations and even of jobs as well.