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

Thanks for the data Laura.

As a quick test, I "eye-balled" the PD incidence data produced by Willis et al. [1] and the USA Today pollution data described as "Schools that ranked worst" [2]. There does seem to be a correlation.

Unfortunately, I can't see an easy way to extract the data to get county level averages. With about 130,000 schools in about 3,000 counties that's difficult to deal with by hand. Can anyone see an easy way to do this?

References

[1] "Geographic and Ethnic Variation in Parkinson Disease: A Population-Based Study of US Medicare Beneficiaries"
Allison Wright Willis, Bradley A. Evanoff, Min Lian, Susan R. Criswell, and Brad A. Racette
Neuroepidemiology. 2010 April; 34(3); 143-151.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2865395/

[2] "Schools that ranked worst"
http://content.usatoday.com/news/nat.../interactive/4

John

Laura

One area studying stats such as this is where a surveillance registry would be very useful. The Parkinson's Action Network (PAN) needs every constituent, regardless of which party you support, to contact your legislators about Data collection through this action:
http://www.parkinsonsaction.org/fede...al-pd-database

Also, August recess is an excellent time to pay a personal visit to your local representatives home offices about any or all of these PAN initiatives:
http://www.parkinsonsaction.org/fede...ealth-benefits

What are you waiting for? Having you personally visit with legislators is of paramount importance - SEEING IS BELIEVING!

Meant to add this helpful link -
http://www.parkinsonsaction.org/news...ken-action-yet

Peg

I found much more data though it does not break down the the contents of particulate matter. From readings though I think it is safe to say that we have excess iron.

Feel rather silly about not researching EPA (Enviro Protection AGency) air pollution stats before now but our government is so lax on letting business pollute that I would not think there would anything useful.

Looks like the EPA has done much work for us already! See this very handy tool that compares air quality among counties and states. The web site is worth exploring for more data as well.

http://www.epa.gov/aircompare/

I didn't mean to suggest you or any of us should go in and gather findings by county for the entire US. I think this database is useful because we can get a breakdown of metals present in the particulate matter for everywhere and if we wanted to go beyond the map, we could design our own smaller study to see of it supports the other research, we have an easily searchable database where people can supply us with their rankings. I think the fact that it is searchable gives us some flexibility over looking at stats. Plus it gives us a narrowly defined air space; county wide stats need refinement. It gives us an air snapshot of a specific setting where we live and sometimes work; many people here do not live in counties in which they work. Are there any differences in health between people who live and work in NYC vs. work in NYC and live in a more rural area of Connecticut? Not sure what else we can do with it, but you never know.

The harder part is correlating this to PD beyond the initial map. How did they collect data? Is the raw data even available? At the very least, we could target a few cluster areas from the PD map and compare air quality between clean air and polluted locales. Hoping we can find some other interesting connections too.

Any other ideas on how we can make this data and that epidemiology map work for us? I am not great at statistics and am a broader picture sort of thinker, but I will gladly help.

Best,

Laura