I was kidding around about the plane.. as laura mentioned, we have been setting up google docs and google has been literally in my face at every mouse click, leading to the imaginative thoughts. i'm always hopeful that posts can break new ground by giving someone somewhere an idea, not by taking the post literally.

p

Here's a very good article from May of this year in OnEarth, an independent publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council. It features PD activist Jackie Christensen who is co-founder of the Collaborative on Health and the Environment's working group on Parkinson's Disease and the Environment (Jackie is also PAN Minnesota State Coordinator).

http://www.onearth.org/article/parki...pesticide-link

"Scientists are closing in on an inescapable conclusion: Pesticides may be a cause of Parkinson's disease"

"A cause-and-effect relationship between environmental neurotoxins and Parkinson's is difficult to prove. As with many other scientific efforts to establish disease causation through population studies, there will probably never be a smoking gun that settles things once and for all. Population studies can detect associations between certain suspected agents and diseases such as cancer, but it's hard to draw conclusions about what causes a disease from studies that can register only correlations. In the case of Parkinson's and the environment, however, there has been a steadily mounting consensus about such a connection, and the pace has quickened in the past year or so."

Inhalents, such as nail polish, paint thinner, propane gas ( remember the welders lawsuit) etc.

Welding is another

you have some things that are in the air ric, but how about all of the:

industrial air pollution
We steelers know what it smells like in production

Then further down the river sits the nuclear power plant.


This isn't a new issue, but how many names do we have of known pd causing pollutants - 0?

Patients doing science research and posters is innovative.

paula

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."

re-prompted me to repost this former posting though it is a discussion of ALS+parkinson's:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...nes#post164298

or: http://tinyurl.com/mnyf5r

Note that "Michael7733 makes the observation that it seems people who work with jet fuel and/or ammo are overrepresented in this group, as well as those who handle cyanide.

The article about PON gene clusters --introductory paragraph:
the following concerns a study reported in a well respected, peer reviewed journal, Neurology, august, 2006, about a genetic variation for coding 3 specific detoxifying enzymes that are directly responsible for metabolizing statin drugs and for detoxifying both pesticides and nerve gases.
there are no reports of the % of the population with these genetic variations--though exposure to these environmental factors--statins, nerve gas and pesticides--in individuals with these genetic variations may be a risk factor for developing the neuromuscular diseases associated with PON gene cluster variants.

I think there is a way to determine if one has the genetic variation within PON genes from the extended profile one may access from the 23andme genetic profile. I need a geneticist to assist me in eliciting this info. Perhaps others who have undergone the profiling can do this with instructions from the 23andme staff (who graciously attempted to help me with this).

1: Exp Neurol. 2004 Dec;190(2):373-83.

Rotenone potentiates dopamine neuron loss in animals exposed to
lipopolysaccharide prenatally.

Ling Z, Chang QA, Tong CW, Leurgans SE, Lipton JW, Carvey PM.

Department of Pharmacology, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL 60612,
USA. zling@rush.edu

We previously demonstrated that treating gravid female rats with the
bacteriotoxin lipopolysaccharide (LPS) led to the birth of offspring with fewer
than normal dopamine (DA) neurons. This DA neuron loss was long-lived and
associated with permanent increases in the pro-inflammatory cytokine tumor
necrosis factor alpha (TNFalpha). Because of this pro-inflammatory state, we
hypothesized that these animals would be more susceptible to subsequent exposure
of DA neurotoxins. We tested this hypothesis by treating female Sprague-Dawley
rats exposed to LPS or saline prenatally with a subtoxic dose of the DA
neurotoxin rotenone (1.25 mg/kg per day) or vehicle for 14 days when they were 16
months old. After another 14 days, the animals were sacrificed. Tyrosine
hydroxylase-immunoreactive (THir) cell counts were used as an index of DA neuron
survival. Animals exposed to LPS prenatally or rotenone postnatally exhibited a
22% and 3%, respectively, decrease in THir cell counts relative to controls. The
combined effects of prenatal LPS and postnatal rotenone exposure produced a
synergistic 39% THir cell loss relative to controls. This loss was associated
with decreased striatal DA and increased striatal DA activity ([HVA]/[DA]) and
TNFalpha. Animals exposed to LPS prenatally exhibited a marked increase in the
number of reactive microglia that was further increased by rotenone exposure.
Prenatal LPS exposure also led to increased levels of oxidized proteins and the
formation of alpha-Synuclein and eosin positive inclusions resembling Lewy
bodies. These results suggest that exposure to low doses of an environmental
neurotoxin like rotenone can produce synergistic DA neuron losses in animals with
a preexisting pro-inflammatory state. This supports the notion that Parkinson's
disease (PD) may be caused by multiple factors and the result of "multiple hits"
from environmental toxins.


PMID: 15530876 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

i feel pretty certain that I've been poisoned, but our own "expert" wouldn't say manganese caused the welders problems. [for a cooL 2 milliion+ as a consultant for the company the welders were suing]
many in here know this but as docjohn says, the majority only read so i am repeating this.

that's my point, they seem reluctant to name the chemicals. so what gives, are we jiust going to accept that they are too hard to find, but keep reading that toxins cause this misery?

another example is in kentucky where dr. gash, presented evidence that the closer people worked to a toxin the more pd there was. no one listening [his peers - this was the udall conference] seemed to buy it or even appear that interested.

it's not a matter if knowing it's pesticides. it's time to name them.

the new curly light bulbs that are supposed to be so efficient contain mercury - mercury! - in them and have to be specially disposed of -can't just throw them in the garbage. so why do we even use them? you know they are going to end up in the regular trash.

i'm tired of being the mutated one. it hasn't been easy, and i'm still going after it.

paula

what do you need?
paula