I have been thinking of the map that Johnt kindly shared with us awhile back. Recall the one with urban areas in the Rustbelt Midwest and the Northeast coast of the US being lit up red like Christmas trees? Well, I just stumbled upon a great tool (Bless USA Today) when I found another map that complements PD study we have. It shows clusters of toxic air as measured outside of schools all across the US. Not just any school but every public or private school in every little podunk town.

We don't know for sure what toxin might be triggering our PD, but I still am firmly in the Manganese/MMT in vehicles camp. Well, there is a small town in Ohio with a high incidence rate of PD. Marietta stands out as home to the only Ferromanganese plant in the USA. They now also have the dubious distinction of having the most polluted air in the US; their schools have 23 times the toxicity threshold for Manganese; the levels range from 77-99% Manganese presence out of thousands of schools nationwide. Remember that in Mexico, a study of children who were exposed to high levels of air pollution showed alpha-synuclein aggregation and had cognitive issues. I shudder to think of the PD rates when these kids hit their thirties and forties.

It is both shameful and bewildering that the EPA has never studied chronic, low level exposure to airborne Manganese. It has long been known as highly neurotoxic and it is ubiquitous even in nature. It is present in dust form and soils especially near geological fault lines but with MMT (Manganese as gasoline additive) we spew out quite a bit of it ourselves with car emissions. Further, children have a much lower toxicity threshold and a not yet fully realized Blood Brain Barrier. They responded to USA Today to say they would be investigating this but really, I know that if they hadn't been called out business would carry on as usual.

Funny, how nearly all etiology and epidemiological studies on PD point fingers at pesticides. This is only one part. What really is making us sick is the chronic exposure to these fine particulates; the resultant metal accumulation is what sets off and keeps the cycle going. No matter how much green tree we drink or RPMs we maintain on the bike we will never get ahead if we continue to breathe this stuff. Makes me wonder....we asked this before: would we improve by moving to a less polluted environment? I am thinking about trying it. Maybe Bali (if only we could prove this-ha)

Best part for last-USA Today has given us data we might find useful. Each one of us in the US can simply key in the closest school to home and get an instant air quality report. Further, JohnT can work his talent with maths and we could, with a little research, get county levels of air pollution or at least a sampling and compare to our original PD cluster map.

Here is the link to the article and searchable database:

http://content.usatoday.com/news/nat...okestack/index