page after page after page! this is a very common used to kill many things

if we eat or drink anything this comes in contact with it will
kill people too...
what if we could take the people who made this neurotoxic chemical to court
and make them responsible to the people and the environment to fund the cure for PD?

Garden pesticide link to Parkinson's


James Meek, science correspondent
Monday November 6, 2000The Guardian


It was only ever a matter of time before scientists pointed to one of the toxic agrochemicals pervading the world and linked it to a major disease of unknown cause.
Today, Professor Tim Greenamyre, of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, will do just that - suggesting at a conference in the US that exposure to rotenone could cause Parkinson's disease, the crippling brain illness which brings suffering to 120,000 Britons.

But, ironically, it is a connection that will shake some of the most ardent opponents of the use of synthetic pesticides in farming. For rotenone is no post-war insect killer cooked up in a corporate lab, but a natural product, extracted from the derris plant, and a mainstay of organic farms and gardens.
The findings of Prof Greenamyre and his team, to be published next month in the journal Nature Neuroscience, show that rats repeatedly given rotenone not only develop the symptoms of Parkinson's - trembling and loss of muscle control - but acquire the distinctive microscopic lumps in the brain, known as Lewy bodies, that are a sure sign of the disease.
"These results," the scientists write, "indicate that chronic exposure to a common pesticide can reproduce the anatomical, neurochemical, behavioural and neuropathological features of Parkinson's disease."
A link between pesticides and Parkinson's, which affects the Pope, Michael J Fox and Muhammad Ali, has been suspected for some time.
A review of 19 different studies over the past decade, carried out at the Ohio Medical College last year, reported that most found exposure to pesticides increased the risk of contracting Parkinson's.
Critics of the pesticide theory point out that the mass use of man-made chemicals to control pests only began in the latter half of the last century, whereas James Parkinson first identified the symptoms of what he called "the shaking palsy" back in 1817, and there is evidence that the disease goes back much further.
But rotenone, in the form of the powdered root of the derris plant, was used on a large scale in the industrial world from the mid-19th century onwards. In some countries, it has an even longer history.
Derris-based pesticides are on sale in garden centres across Britain. Rotenone is sometimes used to control populations of fish, for which it is highly toxic.
One bottle of rotenone pesticide on the shelf of a garden shop yesterday was labelled as "a traditional insecticide" and "a natural plant extract."
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday: "It's too early to say what the safety implications of this study might be. It will be put forward to our pesticide safety directorate toxicologists who will decide whether a review of this particular pesticide needs to take place."
Although the Atlanta scientists have pinpointed rotenone, they make it clear that they believe other pesticides which work in the same way could be equally dangerous.
Benoit Gaisson and Virginia Lee, Parkinson's researchers at Pennsylvania University, said the work did raise questions about rotenone's safety.
"Rotenone is a naturally occurring substance that is eventually degraded in the environment, and as such it is considered to be benign compared to many other pesticides," they wrote in Nature Neuroscience. "Whether rotenone exposure contributes to the incidence of Parkinson's disease remains to be determined. Nevertheless, the effects of chronic rotenone administration observed here may be representative of the possible effects of exposure to low amounts of other environmental toxins, yet to be identified."
One theory is that exposure to one or several pesticides combines with an individual's genetic makeup to cause Parkinson's. The Pennsylvania researchers said the fact that the risk of getting Parkinson's rose sharply with age fitted in with the notion of the drip-drip effect of environmental toxins over time.
In Parkinson's, cells in the brain that produce dopamine, which carries signals between nerve cells, begin to die. The reasons are not understood, but a major clue came in the 1980s, when an attempt to create an illegal designer drug went spectacularly wrong. The guinea pigs who took the drug, MPTP, were struck down with a rapid-onset version of Parkinson's.
MPTP interfered with a key component of the dopamine-producing brain cells, the mitochondria, the "power stations" of cells. Rotenone and other pesticides have a similar effect, although rotenone appears to produce symptoms much closer to typical Parkinson's disease than MPTP.
The Atlanta team believes that at the heart of the problem lies a kind of toxic waste produced by the mitrochondria as they generate energy. This waste comes in the form of rogue molecules called free radicals, which barge around the body, damaging vital functions. One theory holds free radicals responsible for normal ageing.
Even in healthy people, the mitochondria in dopamine-producing cells are thought to produce a high level of these free radicals. The Parkinson's-causing effect of pesticides may be to increase the amount of "waste" the mitochondria produce, causing the death of the cells.

'You tell your body to move - and it doesn't'


It seemed trivial yet it was troubling. The instructor at the toddlers' gym where Maureen McHugh had taken her son asked the parents, as part of an exercise, to wiggle their fingers. Her brain responded, but her fingers didn't.
"I couldn't wiggle the fingers in my left hand," said Dr McHugh, 44, a soil scientist from Aberdeenshire. "I started to lose mobility on my left side. Everyday tasks became difficult."
That was in 1996. Despite signs that something was badly wrong, she did not consult a doctor until 1998, when she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
"Your brain tells your body to move and it does not," she said. "It's going to get steadily worse. It's not supposed to shorten your life - it just makes life a complete misery."
Since being diagnosed, Dr McHugh has been taking the drug L-dopa, which relieves Parkinson's symptoms. It does nothing to treat the cause, and can itself lead to serious disability after long use. But for the time being it enables her to carry out everyday tasks such as driving and helping her partner David Mills with their children.
"I'm fairly incapable at times," she said. "Before I went on the medicine, I was virtually unable to do anything. Now I can do most normal things in a limited way, although I have to plan in advance."
Dr McHugh has spent hours studying research into Parkinson's. She believes the evidence of a link between the illness and chemicals in the environment is strong. Over the years she has been exposed to different toxic chemicals in her work, but doubts that a single chemical such as rotenone is to blame.
With hopes high that a treatment to end Parkinson's may be on the horizon, Dr McHugh is campaigning with other members of the Special Parkinson's Research Interest Group (Spring) to persuade the government to relax restrictions on scientists who believe the best hope of a cure lies in the using human stem cells to create new nerve cells to replace damaged ones.
The only source of human stem cells is surplus human embryos donated by couples undergoing IVF treatment and at present scientists are barred from using these for research into anything other than fertility problems.
"It's vital that the government make these changes," said Dr McHugh. "The embryos in question are very early. An individual being hasn't been established at that point."

http://www.epa.gov/oppsrrd1/reregist...tenone_red.pdf

the US EPA gives roteone the okay!!! - can we fire this person?