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Hi, everyone. I was thrilled when Peggy Willocks asked me to take a shot at writing an environmental column, and I hope that you will find the information to be interesting and useful.
 
Why me? Well, I have almost 20 years of experience working to make our world's environment cleaner, healthier and safer from toxic chemicals and other harmful things such as radioactivity, antibiotics and dangerous germs. Even before I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, I was concerned about the fact that there were more than 70,000 – yes, seventy thousand -- chemicals being used to make the food that we eat, the clothes that we wear, the machines that we use and all of the trappings of our modern lives. About 95 percent of those chemicals have NOT been tested to see if they cause cancer or birth defects of affect the central nervous system or growth and development! If you are one of the millions of Americans who thinks that because we can use or buy a product, it must be safe, I hate to burst your bubble - that is just not the case.
 
What does this have to do with Parkinson's disease? Well, most of us have been operating under the assumption that the products that we use at home and at work are safe. In doing so, we may have been exposed to something in the world around us that set off a chain reaction in our bodies that resulted in PD.

A number of chemicals have been linked to Parkinson's disease and have gotten a lot of media attention recently.

They include:

• rotenone, (pronounced "ROH' ten own") a commonly used plant-based pesticide that is believed to cause inflammation of the brain, which leads to death of dopamine-producing neurons. When combined with lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a poison formed when certain bacteria break down within the body, amounts of rotenone that seemed to have no effect when used alone become lethal to the neurons. [Bin Liu, et al] Rotenone is often used to kill fish that are considered undesirable or a threat to recreational or commercial fisheries.

• Paraquat, an insecticide, is chemically similar to MPTP, a compound that induced Parkinson-like symptoms in some individuals who had been attempting to synthesize heroin but made MPTP instead. MPTP is used as a benchmark against which the neurotoxicity (ability to damage or destroy cells in the brain and central nervous system) of other chemicals is measured. Paraquat is applied to a number of food crops, including corn and soybeans as well as cotton and fruit. Maneb is used on corn and other vegetables, such as potatoes, lettuce and tomatoes. [University of Rochester]

• Some fungicides – maneb, for example -- contain manganese, a heavy metal that has long been associated with Parkinson-like symptoms. [Zhou, et al.] When laboratory mice are exposed to paraquat and maneb at the same time, many of them develop nearly all of the physical signs of PD seen in humans. Corn is one crop that frequently receives application of both products.

Organophosphate pesticides such as chlorpyrifos (Dursban™) and organochlorine compounds such as lindane – a highly toxic pesticide still used in the U.S. to treat head lice – and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) may also have lethal effects on dopamine-producing neurons. [Carpenter, et al.]

Several heavy metals have been implicated as possible contributors to PD. Those include aluminum, iron, lead and manganese. Autopsies on the brains of PD patients have found elevated levels of aluminum and iron. Because of the known neurotoxicity of manganese, many people have expressed concern about the potential health risks of the manganese-based gasoline additive MMT.

To learn more about how toxic chemicals, heavy metals or other contaminants in our environment may cause PD and other health problems, check out the Collaborative on Health and the Environment at www.cheforhealth.org You can also find lots of information on health and the environment that is written for just plain folks (not PhDs or medical doctors) by my friends at the Environmental Research Foundation – Peter Montague, PhD and Maria Pellerano – at www.rachel.org/.

If you have any comments, information or suggestions for me, you can reach me at pdbaublehead@yahoo.com or by calling my cell phone: 612-325-0372. Thanks!