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Senior Member
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: "all the way over on the West Coast"
Posts: 1,032
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Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: "all the way over on the West Coast"
Posts: 1,032
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implications of specific pollutants
From the above mentioned article in OnEarth:
"Scientists also observed these symptoms in groups of people exposed to unrelated compounds, such as heavy metals. One in particular, manganese, was implicated in a 2006 study of residents of the steelmaking town of Hamilton, Ontario, who had a higher-than-expected rate of Parkinson's disease. Investigators attributed this to the manganese content of particulate air pollution from factory emissions. It turns out that manganese is an ingredient in the widely used fungicide Maneb.
But pesticides remain the clearest culprit. One study found that in the brains of people who had died of Parkinson's disease, the substantia nigra had higher levels of Dieldrin (an organochlorine pesticide no longer approved for use in the United States) and of lindane (an insecticide occasionally still used to treat scabies and lice) than did the brains of people who had died of other causes. Laboratory studies have also provided important clues to the connection between pesticides and brain damage. When human brain cells are grown in culture and exposed to a variety of chemicals, several widely used pesticides -- in particular, Paraquat and Rotenone, a natural pesticide approved for use in organic foods -- have been shown to cause increased levels of alpha-synuclein, a protein in the substantia nigra, similar to the levels that are seen in people with Parkinson's disease."
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Carey
“Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.” — Susan B. Anthony
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