Parkinson's and Pesticides

For those who have emailed sympathies about my broken arm, thanks. It is coming along, and happily, my doctor tells me I can expect to regain "98% of the use of the arm." He says I may never be able to hyperextend the elbow (straightening the arm to the point where the elbow actually pops inward) but, in the big picture, this is a short-term painful nuisance, nothing more.

This week I heard from a dear, old friend who is suffering from more than a painful nuisance. She has been diagnosed with Parkinson's. Coincidentally, the day we exchanged emails, a new study was published in the on-line journal BMC Neurology that helps cement the link between Parkinson's and pesticide exposure.

Most people think of pesticides as something farmers use and are exposed to, but consumers are as well, through the use of lawn & garden products and household insect repellents and antifungals. In this study, scientists did something a bit unique, looking within families at both Parkinson's sufferers and their relatives who don't show symptoms of the disease, studying the families of 319 Parkinson's sufferers, while controlling for age, sex, cigarette smoking, and caffeine consumption. What they found: "Overall, individuals with PD [Parkinson's] were significantly more likely to report direct pesticide application than their unaffected relatives."

The researchers started with a phone questionnaire, asking, "Have you ever applied pesticides to kill weeds, insects, or fungus at or, in your home, in your garden, or on your lawn?" They explained that, "Application of any pesticide chemical by spreading solid granules, spraying by hand, spraying by tractor, spraying by airplane, putting in irrigation water, or placing pest strips or traps, was considered a direct pesticide application".

Anyone who answered yes to the question was then questioned in more detail on the types of pesticides they remembered applying, when they applied it, how frequently they applied it, and other follow up questions. They also followed up with all participants on information about where they lived, where their drinking water came from, where they worked, and other pertinent questions to help define potential pesticide exposures.

The bottom line of their study: Individuals who reported either childhood or adult direct applications of pesticides were 1.61 times more likely to have Parkinson's than those who did not report pesticide use. In statistical terms that is quite significant. Think of it this way, if you apply or applied these chemicals at some point in your life, you are almost twice as likely to get Parkinson's as someone who has never applied them.

I don't know what my friend's exposure history might have been as a child or an adult. I think back to my own child, and remember getting the can of Raid to kill crickets chirping in the house. My husband remembers jabbing weeds in the family lawn with "kill sticks". We have both avoided pesticide applications of any type throughout our adulthoods, but one thing about exposures is that some can come back to haunt us decades after the exposure took place.

Worker Exposures

Sorry I haven't posted again in a while. I fell on the ice and broke my arm. I'm sure ready for spring!

I frequently get e-mails from readers sharing their stories or asking me questions. Recently I received an email from a reader who explained that she had been exposed at work over a three-year period to industrial styrene, MEK peroxide and acetone. She wondered if these could have contributed to her health problems, which include shortness of breath, hoarseness, and stomach problems. The short answer is yes. I recommended that she search for an environmental doctor at the American Academy of Environmental Medicine website and contact an attorney who handles workmen's comp cases. She's done both and workmen's comp is now sending her to some specialists, so hopefully with attention she can get better. But I'd like to use her case as an example for other readers to learn how to gather information about the chemicals they may have been exposed to.

There are dozens of really great places online to learn about chemicals and what they might be doing to your health. Admittedly, some of them lead to information that requires a Ph.D. to understand, but there are a fair number that are geared toward regular people. For this kind of search I recommend starting with the scorecard.org website. Click on chemical profiles under health hazards and entered the name of the chemical that you're concerned with. I plugged styrene into the database. I learned that styrene is a suspected carcinogen, cardiovascular or blood toxicant, developmental toxicant, endocrine toxicant, gastrointestinal toxicant, immunotoxicant, kidney toxicant, neurotoxicant, reproductive toxicant, respiratory toxicant, and skin or sense organ toxicant. Clicking on the health hazards link for styrene, I learn that the worker exposure hazard score, which “indicate[s] how a chemical compares with other [chemicals] in terms of its capacity to impact the health of a factory worker,” is quite high.

Next I check MEK peroxide. It's a gastrointestinal toxicant, respiratory toxicant, and skin or sense organ toxicant. Acetone is a cardiovascular or blood toxicant, developmental toxicant, endocrine toxicant, gastrointestinal toxicant, kidney toxicant, neurotoxicant, reproductive toxicant, respiratory toxicant, and skin or sense organ toxicant. Of course, in this reader’s case she was being exposed to all three so there are cumulative and additive impacts.

For each chemical ScoreCard has multiple layers of information that allows you to drill down deeper and deeper. For example, for acetone I clicked the link to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry Public Health Statement. This brought me to a website that explains in fairly understandable language about acetone—how it enters the environment, how people may be exposed, what happens to it in the body, and what its effects on health are.


The good news is that today anyone can educate themselves using a service like ScoreCard. Here's few other points people should consider for workplace exposures:

1. The families of workers who are exposed in workplace often suffer from the same exposures as the family member who actually goes to work. This is because that family member comes home with their clothes Saturated in the chemicals. They go into the wash with the rest of the family's clothing, thus causing a sort of trickle-down exposure. As Dr. Bernhoft said in the post about detoxification, almost all chronic illnesses are the result of an interaction between genes and environment, so it is possible that the worker would not show symptoms from an exposure, yet a family member whose genetics are so disposed, would show symptoms from the family member’s exposure who goes to the workplace.

2. Exposures can also occur “across the fence line” for people living near industrial facilities that use chemicals. Want to learn if you're across the fence line from something? Is it EPA's toxic release inventory database where you can search by zip code to learn about larger industrial chemical users in your area.

3. Sometimes “industrial” is a misleading term. Workplace exposures can also come from small businesses such as welding shops or auto repair shops, painting businesses, art businesses, beauty salons, and other small businesses that people do not usually considered particularly hazardous.
4.From what I hear workmen's compensation officials may be less than fully knowledgeable about the health impacts of chemicals on workers. This is why I recommended the reader contact an attorney who handles comp cases. I think this is changing as both doctors and bureaucrats are becoming more educated about the impacts of even low-level exposures over long periods, but it is something to be aware of.