‘Parkinson’s is a man-made disease’ - Pesticides may be fueling a silent epidemic, warns Dutch neurologist Bas Bloem
‘Parkinson’s is a man-made disease’: How a chemical Europe can’t quit may be driving the disease – POLITICO
I love this dedication, but as someone who works in hazardous materials and workplace safety, he sounds rather naive in some areas.
“I don’t know of a single farmer who’s doing things purposely wrong,” Bloem says. “They’re just following the rules. The problem is, the rules are wrong.”
I can only conclude he doesn't know many farmers. I don't visit farms very often, because there aren't a lot of safety or materials certificates farmers need to have, but I've still seen some shit you wouldn't believe
Mixing things in water by sticking your arms in to the shoulder and swirling them around, working in the dust without PPE when that dust contains known heavy metals from the streams they dredged themselves, working downwind of pesticide spray... And those aren't even uncommon.
I fully agree a lot of safety are stupid, either because they're too lax, or unworkably strict and unneeded, but there are FAR more issues that arise from people ignoring the rules that come out of the rules being too lenient. And when it IS the latter, it's mostly because we just don't know stuff.
When is the last time you followed the instructions on your cleaning spray to the letter? Or paint? Never? Yeah, exactly.
"Chemical companies need to show their chemicals are safe"
And how would that work? How can you show a chemical is safe, ever? How can you test for interactions you don't know about, or chronic effects that probably won't even show up in animals?
And even if you DID show it was safe under circumstances, how can you make sure people handling it will stick to those circumstances? This shit is hard, and people suck at risk assessment, so they'll fuck up even if they know better.
I can only conclude he doesn’t know many farmers
As someone who grew up in the countryside, I can very much confirm that the guy clearly does not know farmers, and have not been to any that aren't over-the-top modernized and/or given weeks of notice of his arrival.
And it should be noted that the symptoms have been vaguely descibred for around three thousand years, and more accurately for four hundred years. If you combine that information with the fact that he clearly doesn't understand how farms work, I'm going to assume that he's fearmongering.
and/or given weeks of notice of his arrival.
And the examples I listed ARE from places that had advanced notice. It's why most auditors get pretty anal about small stuff, we know it's 10 times worse when we're not there.
My grandad, who was a farmer, used to say that the sellers of Roundup (the weed killer from roundup.com) would drink it during sales pitches to prove it wasn’t toxic to humans. So it wasn’t just farmers making questionable decisions—some of the misinformation came from the sellers themselves.
These days, it's labeled as unsafe to use without gloves, and the high-concentration version sold to farmers isn't even available to the general public anymore, at least where I live.
It just gives some context on why certain practices exist—bad or misleading information played a big role in shaping them and it is or was not always just the farmers alone.
I wonder if he's just being careful politically. Farmers are a polarised topic in the Netherlands.
Yeah, if you speak the truth, soon you'll have 20 tractors in your street
Syngenta has consistently denied any link between paraquat and Parkinson’s, pointing to regulatory reviews in the U.S., Australia and Japan that found no evidence of causality.
Well I don't know about the US or Japan, but I can trust my government to do the right thing.
The chief executive confirmed the science underpinning the regulator’s decision rests largely on an earlier report prepared for the APVMA in 2016, which also assessed mice studies linking paraquat to Parkinson’s disease.
That report acknowledged Dr Cory-Slechta and her co-authors’ findings from 2002 that paraquat caused hallmarks of Parkinson’s in mice that were injected with the chemical.
But the 2016 report’s authors ultimately dismissed those findings, on the basis that an unpublished paper, funded by Syngenta, could not reproduce them.
Ibn Rushd aka Averroès was one of the first to describe the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. It was in the 12th century.
In germany Parkinson is accepted as a so called "Berufskrankheit" (Job related illness) for farmers due to their increased contact to pesticides.
I wonder what causes autism? Could it be due to toxins, pollution, and decades of dumping chemicals everywhere? Nah couldn’t be. It’s those damn vaccines and pharmaceuticals companies. You can only trust them when it about weight loss drugs. /s
This really goes far in explaining all the autism in the pre industrial eras. Genius, really.
and is expected to double again in the next 20. It is now one of the fastest-growing neurological disorders in the world, outpacing stroke and multiple sclerosis
Why is it expected to double again? How can you make that prediction when you aren't sure why it doubled in the first place. Unless it's more prevalent because people live longer and you expect people to live even longer in the future (we can have pretty good modelling of this).
Is it the growth that's greater than the growth of stroke and MS or is Parkinson's more common than those diseases? Seems unclear. If it's growth then how is it relevant? Is stroke and MS case load growing at an alarming rate?
Doesn't it seem weird that they don't see an increased Parkinson's rate in farmers? Asbestos was identified as a danger because it killed the miners and craftsmen working with it.
Apparently there is. From the article:
In France, a nationwide study found that Parkinson’s rates were significantly higher in vineyard regions that rely heavily on fungicides. Another study found that areas with higher agricultural pesticide use — often measured by regional spending — tend to have higher rates of Parkinson’s, suggesting a dose-response relationship. In Canada and the U.S., maps of Parkinson’s clusters track closely with areas of intensive agriculture.
Basically, drill baby drill, will make us more sick. Donald don't cares, he is rich.
But, we humans, must change things together. Peace I am watching.
Very interesting! Thank you.
Pulls Bas Bloem mask off to reveal RFK Jr. underneath.
There's a danger this headline is misleading. James Parkinson identified the disease over 200 years ago, so whatever it is can clearly happen without pesticides. Perhaps they make it more prevalent? But that's very different from saying that a recent invention makes a very old disease "man'made"
From the article:
Identification of Parkinson's disease coincides with the industrial revolution, so the claim is still plausible.
We've likely known about Parkinson's since the 12th century, just never named it as such. But it's very much possible that pollutants increase the risk.
Was my thought, too. Just the headline alone is inconsistent. "Man made epidemic" might have been better fitting.