For 34 years – 1985 through 2018 – I wore a suit and tie to work every day. Five days a week, every week, even after the advent of Casual Friday.
Those suits had to be laundered regularly, so I took them to a drycleaner. For 34 years, strangers would dunk my suits in a chemical bath, wrap them in plastic, and hand them back to me. I’d then hang them up in my closet, where they’d air out into my bedroom or home office.
For several years, my radio station had an arrangement with a drycleaning delivery service. Tuesdays: pickup. Fridays: return. Newly-cleaned clothes on a rack on the sales floor. There our suits and dresses would hang for hours as we walked by, inhaling and exhaling.
As Roy Dorsey and Michael Okun report in their new book, The Parkinson’s Plan: A New Path to Prevention and Treatment, the chemicals many drycleaners were using at the time — perchloroethylene (“perc”) and trichloroethylene (TCE) — are closely associated with cancer and Parkinson’s.
I breathed a lot of that stuff for three decades. And I’ve had tumors in my pancreas and lung, and now have Parkinson’s.
Coincidence?
Correlation is not causation, and decades can pass between exposure and diagnosis. Absolute proof is hard to come by.
While some Parkinson’s cases have a genetic component, Dorsey and Okun say the vast majority of cases are caused by environmental factors. It is their position that much of Parkinson’s can be prevented if we, individually and as a society, take the right steps.
The book lists a “Parkinson’s 25” — 25 things we as individuals can do to lower our chances of getting the disease. It is disheartening to contemplate how many places we all encounter these substances, and how tough it will be to address them all.
On their list of challenges to tackle:
Produce: Water isn’t enough to get the pesticides off your fruits and veggies. Buy a vegetable wash and wash your produce. Buy organic when you can. But the organic stuff can also have pesticide residue, so wash that, too.
Meat and dairy: Pesticides, and industrial chemicals can concentrate in animal fat.
Wine: You may be drinking pesticides. A 2019 Eau de Glyphosate has a lovely bouquet.
Grocery stores can be next to a drycleaner. So you may be breathing perc as you pick up that box of Froot Loops.
Agriculture: If you live on, work on, or live near a farm, there’s all sorts of stuff in the air and water.
Well water isn’t regulated by the safe Drinking Water Act. If you have a well, the authors recommend testing the water at least once a year.
Tap water: The authors recommend installing a filter regardless of where the water comes from.
Your garden: “Individuals who spent an average of 160 days with weed killers in their yard… had a 70% increased risk of Parkinson’s compared to the unexposed.”
Exterminators: Have you ever called someone to take care of ants, fleas, or other bugs? Have you ever set out mothballs? Some common home pesticides, such as permethrin, have been tied to increased incidence of Parkinson’s.
What’s near your home? The authors say that over 70 million Americans (22% of the population) live within 3 miles of a Superfund site. 20 million live within a mile. Many of the sites do not have signs or fences. If you don’t know it’s there, you wouldn’t know it’s there.
Air pollution on congested streets and highways is associated with an increased risk for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
Drycleaners: As discussed earlier, but the effects go well beyond their customers and employees. If there is a drycleaner on the ground floor of your apartment complex, or next to your child’s school or day care center, your family may be breathing some toxic compounds.
There are steps we can take to mitigate these risks. Dorsey and Okun have some good advice to offer. But who has money, time, or expertise to manage it all?
Banning all of these chemicals would come with related costs — crop damage, higher food prices, bugs in the kitchen — so even if we could do it, there are many stakeholders whose legitimate concerns would need to be addressed.
It may not have been the authors’ intent, but I came away from the “Parkinson’s 25” chapter feeling frustrated and a bit cynical. Do we really have a chance to make a difference?
If Parkinson’s can’t be fully prevented, we have the opportunity to reduce the prevalence if we make enough noise.
The Parkinson’s Plan is helping to make that happen. The day I wrote this post, Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column, inspired by the book, focused on Parkinson’s and the pesticide paraquat. We’re getting a little extra attention this month.
In this society, the loudest voices are often served first. Okun and Dorsey have raised their voices. It’s time to raise ours.
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Attention Golfers: Stop Licking Your Balls
On page 173 of The Parkinson’s Plan, is a discussion of the correlation between proximity to golf courses and a higher incidence of Parkinson’s disease. A 1996 study found that golf course superintendents “who commonly use pesticides to keep golf courses weed-free had twice the risk of dying due to a nervous system disorder than the general population.“
The authors offer this advice (added emphasis mine):
Ask your favorite course or club what pesticides they use and when they spray. Encourage them to use less. Have them consider safer alternatives. In the interim, avoid playing on courses just after they have been sprayed. And don’t lick your golf ball. Swallowing pesticides is not healthy, either.
I am not a golfer, so this concept surprised me. I immediately did exactly what any 13-year-old boy would do – I went to Google and typed “Do golfers lick their balls?” into the search bar.
It turns out that yes, some do, either to make golf balls roll faster or just to clean dirt and debris off of them. And according to the Los Angeles Times, an Irish golfer picked up a nasty case of hepatitis from the practice.
So if you’re asking, “Should I…?” the answer is no, don’t.
It’s just not worth it.
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Bonus for Those Who Read to the Bottom
“Age is Just a Number” Edition
4th and 5th-graders from Staten Island tackle the Velvet Underground, and do a very creditable job. If you’re going to teach a Velvets song to elementary school kids, this is probably a better choice than “I’m Waiting for the Man.”
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When high school kids take on a punk anthem from well before they were born, there are lots of ways it can go wrong, but this goes absolutely right. There are almost 1100 gushingYouTube comments — mostly from older Fugazi fans who, like this reporter, were not expecting to be impressed when they clicked “Play.” But impressed we are.
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I have no idea who these people are — there is no description attached to the video, and Google had no info. But I must concur with the single YouTube comment: “This is just awesome.”
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