NeuroTalk Support Groups - from pipeline email

http://www.riskandinsurance.com/stor...ryId=388074909

Researchers from the Parkinson's Institute in Sunnyvale, Calif., are expected to present their findings at the American Academy of Neurology's annual meeting in April. Samuel Goldman, author of the study, said this is the first research that has confirmed the risk of employee exposure to tricholorethylene. This chemical is a popular industrial solvent that is still widely used to clean grease off metal parts.

The study found workers who were exposed to tricholorethylene were five and a half times more likely to have Parkinson's disease than people not exposed to the chemical. Those who were exposed to the chemical had job histories including work as dry cleaners, machinists, mechanics or electricians.

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this man was a kentucky gdnf participant. still fighting for his life i see.
that is frustrating and has taken years to get where it is.

New York Times, January 25, 2009

Exposed to Solvent, Worker Faces Hurdles

By FELICITY BARRINGER
"BEREA, Ky. — When the University of Kentucky published new research in 2008 suggesting that exposure to a common industrial solvent might increase the risk for Parkinson’s disease, the moment was a source of satisfaction to Ed Abney, a 53-year-old former tool-and-die worker.

Mr. Abney, now sidelined by Parkinson’s, had spent more than two decades up to his elbows in a drum of the solvent, trichloroethylene, while he cleaned metal piping at a now-shuttered Dresser Industries plant here.

The university study had focused on him and his factory co-workers who worked near the same 55-gallon drum of the vaguely sweet-smelling chemical. It found that 27 workers had either the anxiety, tremors, rigidity or other symptoms associated with Parkinson’s, or had motor skills that were significantly impaired, compared with a healthy peer group. The study, Mr. Abney thought, was the scientific evidence he needed to claim worker’s compensation benefits.

He was wrong. The medical researchers would not sign the form attesting that Mr. Abney’s disease was linked to his work.

Individuals like Mr. Abney are caught between the conflicting imperatives of science and law — and there is a huge gap between what researchers are discovering about environmental contaminants and what they can prove about their impact on disease. The gap has ensured that only a tiny fraction of worker’s compensation payments are received by those who were exposed to harmful substances at work. ..."

full article at

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/us/25toxic.html

“It’s awfully difficult for any doctor or researcher to say to an individual: ‘You have this disease because you were exposed at this time,’ ” said J. Paul Leigh, a professor of public health sciences at the University of California, Davis.

How many people are caught in the same bind as Mr. Abney, “nobody really knows,” said Rafael Metzger, a California lawyer who specializes in cases involving diseases contracted in the workplace.