Living within 1 mile of a golf course associated with 126% increased odds of developing Parkinsons
Just a moment...
It's the pesticides in the grass...
Hank's razor. If you have that kind of money you have good healthcare. If you have good healthcare you live long enough to get "old person" ailments. You also can afford a proper diagnosis.
"Individuals getting their tap water from groundwater water service areas with a golf course had nearly doubled odds of PD compared with individuals getting tap water from groundwater water service areas without golf courses "
Now THAT is significant
The tree clearing chemicals they use during golf course construction are much more carcinogenic than the sprays used for upkeep.
They're all carcinogenic! How fast they give you cancer doesn't matter as much as "they will fucking kill you with your own cells".
Well that's one way to devalue the real estate around golf courses.
That way they can purchase adjacent land very cheaply and keep expanding. Golf courses, literally a cancer.
Are there similar studies for farmland? Living near where pesticides are spread can't be good for your health, either.
Uh oh. I have a golf course near me closer than that! I’m literally shaking right now!
Correct use of literally, let me shake your hand.
If I can catch it.
I've been a participant of the PPMI study for a few years now and this year they changed up the quarterly survey to include questions about chemical exposure. This article makes that change make a bit more sense now. Coincidentally a lot of chemicals I used in the lab were on the survey too. https://www.ppmi-info.org/
IDK enough about statistics to really interpret these results but ... I have some concerns.
If these results are accurate and herbicides are responsible I would've thought the stuff would be outlawed. Herbicides are used in a vast range of applications. The fallout would be like asbestos or something.
That said, 126% increased odds sounds like a lot but if the odds are 1 in 1000 and the study size contains only 9000 individuals then the usual odds would be 9 cases but 10 cases would represent a 900% increase.
I also don't understand the drinking water angle. Do people really have private wells from which they draw drinking water ? Enough people to be statistically significant?
Don't you remember the whole round up court case... some how they slimed out of having to acknowledge all the cancer.
Most rural areas don't have public water mains, and therefore houses draw from private wells for drinking water. Every house I've lived in has had a private well, in NW CT and Western MA. When you buy a house you get the water tested to make sure it meets EPA standards for drinking water. I've lived in houses that had more than the recommended amount of iron, sodium, etc.
Currently living near a golf course now and the water is more acidic than other well water I've had. Currently testing at a neutral 7.0 which is good but our initial well test had it at 6.5 which is not. I assumed it was related to the golf course and farmland.
That said, 126% increased odds sounds like a lot but if the odds are 1 in 1000 and the study size contains only 9000 individuals then the usual odds would be 9 cases but 10 cases would represent a 900% increase.
I think you should check your calculation again. A 900% increase from 9 expected cases would be 90 cases.
Also the abstract already explains your questions:
Findings This case-control study found the greatest risk of PD within 1 to 3 miles of a golf course, and that this risk generally decreased with distance. Effect sizes were largest in water service areas with a golf course in vulnerable groundwater regions.
Exposures Distance to golf courses, living in water service areas with a golf course, living in water service areas in vulnerable groundwater regions, living in water service areas with shallow municipal wells, and living in water service areas with a municipal well on a golf course.
So if the local waterplant is extracting ground water where pesticides leach in, that increases the effects, which is to be expected.
Finally there is plenty of harmful chemicals that are known to be harmful but thanks to lobbying remain legal decades after the fact is established. See PFAS and Glyphosate for current examples.
I'm kind of glad about that water thing because there's a golf course about a mile downhill and I don't know where they get their water but ours is piped in from an uphill reservoir quite far in the other direction. Which might have all kinds of other unknowns in it, of course, but I'm so old I'm probably mostly microplastics and carcinogens by now.
To add to your chemical point, once the aquifer (the water under the ground) is contaminated with chemicals, it is nearly impossible to clean up and must be treated as it is pumped out for use. It isn't like a lake that can heal from damages over time with plants and animals accumulating the toxins. They are stuck there forever until they are either pumped out of a well or flow through the aquifer until it reachs a spring where the water reachs the surfaces, which could be 100s of kms away and take 100s of years for the water to get there.
If you've ever seen an old gas station fenced off with random posts/metal poles around the site, it is probably an array of monitoring wells to track the concentration and movement of contaminated water.
There is no evidence that glyphosate has any negative health effects. It's like MSG, just because you hear it, it doesn't mean it true. This is what we have science for, and a good 30 years of research.
Some communities also have communal wells--my condo association has 4 which provide water for all the units. They're monitored for quality by an outside agency, but I'm not sure what they check for.
It's a reasonable theory. We have seen people develop Parkinsonian symptoms after exposure to toxins before - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9918159/
The statistics are interesting. If I understand correctly, they picked a group of people with Parkinson's and then identified 20 community-dwelling demographic-matched seniors who were the same age at the time of diagnosis. Then, they looked at the closest distance that the people lived to a golf course within 3 years prior to diagnosis, and computed the likelihood of developing Parkinson's based on demographics, distance to a golf course, and certain characteristics of the water and soil.
I'm not sure your assessment of the odds is accurate going from 9 out of 9000 to 10 out of 9000 should be an 11% increase. This paper shows something like 100% increase within 3 miles of a golf course. So that's 9 in 9000 to 18 in 9000. Still low risk but enough to make scientists go "huh" and maybe for politicians to consider changing regulations about pesticides (I wish). It's not just golf courses to worry about, though. Think of all the farmers, too, who are exposed to similar toxins.
The drinking water angle was added to see of certain soil or sources of drinking water would impact the odds of PD diagnosis. The paper was based on data from Minnesota iirc, so I would expect more rural people to have private wells. My understanding was it was less about "statistical significance" and more about "seeing if this variable can explain away the apparent impact of golf course proximity".
Seems like it could also be that rich old people are more likely to get Parkinsons diagnosed than young people or poor old people, and also more likely to live near a golf course.
Addressed by the paper - they included age and income as control variables. The relationship b/w proximity and PD persists.
For your well question, yes. Very common in rural areas for each house to have their own well and septic. Many golf courses are also located rurally, often with a more well off neighbourhood being developed neaby the course. The golf course may also have a well for irrigation. Poorly maintained and illegally drilled wells may not be sealed effectively and could allow contaminated surface runoff to enter the aquifer faster.
I don’t think everyone in FL has Parkinson’s