Hello,

Over the course of about a year I was exposed to high levels of vaporized manganese. I won't go into great detail but I was experimenting with potassium permanganate as an oxidizer in rocket motors. I was unaware that manganese was a dangerous thing to be inhaling. Since then I've learned that people with high levels of manganese in their water may be inhaling enough in their daily shower to cause damage.

I'm posting this here because the effects of manganese poisoning are very similar to Parkinson's disease and because I don't know where else to post it.

I'm trying to find a doctor who has treated a patient with Mn poisoning or another person who has it.

Unlike other poisonings, the cessation of contact with the offending agent does not mean symptoms will stop getting worse. Actually, from what I've found on PubMed, the symptoms of Mn poisoning will keep getting worse for more than a decade.

L-dopa is described as marginally and transiently effective. Selegiline apparently does not help (the suggestion was that Mn-induced oxidative stress was the cause, so the hope was that selegiline as an antioxidant would help). Chelation is described as being useless outside of acute poisoning.

So I haven't found any good news. My muscles are always stiff, my hands shake, I have terrible rls (for which I was given a number of Parkinson's drugs, the only one that helped was l-dopa, which worked amazingly, but soon augmentation meant I was having restless legs at 5 o'clock so I discontinued it). I find that I'm walking on the front of my feet which is giving me hard calluses. Worse, on a few occasions my legs haven't done what I've wanted them to and I've fallen at work.

Is there anything that can be done or do I just have to live with it? I'm only 28 and I've always prized my intelligence above all else (I had an iq test when I was in high school and scored 140 something). I hate to think I may lose that.

Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Ham