Occupational Use of 2,4-D, Permethrin Triple the Risk of Parkinson’s Disease

[pvw2]

beyondpesticides.org/dailyn...

[Rosenmu]

I live down stream from what used to be a high agriculture area and am sure my well water was exposed to all kinds of farm chemicals, which I drank for 30 years before wising up. There was a study done north of here that came to the conclusion that there were more cases of PD in our AG areas.

[pvw2 in reply to Rosenmu]

Another reason to handle carbon dioxide emissions by adding charcoal to the soil instead of the expensive and exotic techniques devised to make money. The Aztecs did it and made very fertile soil. The charcoal would hold fertilizer and pesticides and help prevent them from getting into the water table, like charcoal filters in you water filters. Charcoal in the soil is lasting 500 to 1000 years.

[MarionP in reply to pvw2]

This sounds like a really great idea!

[MarionP in reply to Rosenmu]

yep.

[AlpacaGal]

I always felt this is what got me. For twenty odd years I diligently used commercial fly sprays containing permethrin (labeled "safe and effective") to protect my livestock. Ten years ago I switched to natural essential oils. If only I'd known sooner.

[kaypeeoh]

Hmmm, 10 years in vet college then 35 years in vet practice, we were told since day-one that pyrethrins were the safest chemicals for dealing with parasites.

[pvw2 in reply to kaypeeoh]

PD 3x more likely is not near as definite as heavy metal exposure, such as mercury.

[MarionP in reply to kaypeeoh]

I have read several sources that suggested that pyrethrins operate mostly on insect systems, not human systems, and break down fairly quickly.

[pvw2 in reply to MarionP]

My main concern is 2-4-D, also known a cotton defoliate. I worked on summer on a ryton plant and the cotton defoliate plant next to it would sometimes send over horrible fumes that would make us choke. I know pyrethrin is one of the milder insecticides. 2-4-D is used in mass quantities in cotton field where the winters are too mild for a early frost. It essentially makes mulching cotton hulls unusable.

[MarionP in reply to pvw2]

I hear your concern. But 24D itself, and it is usually listed alone as an ingredient, just isn't very toxic at all. It's basically a way of getting plant hormones to make the plant grow beyond its food supply. Doesn't do much at all to humans. A salt on an oil molecule, basically.

Really it's not all that much different from, say, very greasy, very salty salt. Which means it's a good carrier for other things. It's those other things that are dangerous.

But toxic things can often be added onto 24D and by themselves or in combination with the extra un-saturated electron and very very quickly can become lots of very very bad things, agent orange, other dioxins, the 2-4-7-8-T dioxin (that had a lot more clorines attached to an oily base, that "phenyl" I was talking about, an oil molecule that is itself reactive because it has a very strongly charged open hook off of one end, an electron) that was the real powerful cancer cause in agent orange, i.e., the combination of oxygens with unattached electrons and 3 or more chlorines with unattached electrons in an oily base (likes to stay in the body, that's the phenyl I mentioned, the hydrocarbon). Those are very harmful to humans because they are so reactive, they punch holes in cells and membranes and molecules and all sorts of things that need to be not full of holes...all those unattached electrons and because they like to stay in your system (oily). You look out for phrases like dioxin and 245T or 2478T. Reactive oxygen species, free radicals, tons, loads.

By the way, about cotton you mentioned, something very dangerous about cotton, not the 2,4D, but they used a lot of ARSENIC in those mixes to kill weevils and other insects, really a lot of it; and it stayed in the soil, a heavy metal. And you could well have been sprayed with that arsenic. Now that would cause some severe, severe things, just look up arsenic toxicity.

NOW, today, a lot of rice in the US is grown on land that used to be used to grow cotton. Stay away from any rice grown in the lands in the US that used to be used to grow cotton. Those cotton lands were sprayed with this nasty stuff relying on the arsenic, and it is still in the soil where the rice is different, rice is unique in it's ability to take up that arsenic and concentrate it, where it sits until harvested and processed. Especially in the outer hull, meaning that "healthy" unpolished nutritious brown rice is also loaded with arsenic.

So if you eat much rice, especially brown rice, that was grown in the South US, Texas, etc., you could definitely be poisoning yourself with arsenic, which does lots of bad things and it does bad things to people with PD, take a very long time to clear because it is a heavy metal. And PS: if you have pets, look on the bag. A lot of "premium" dog and cat food contains rice grown on that land, so we are poisoning our loved pets with it too.

AND as to that, having done some research, if you want rice with little or none, try to get this stuff called ROYAL brand rice, it is grown in just about the only unpolluted (except from whatever comes down in rain over the Himalayas) water-source for rice, the foothills of India and Nepal. Walmart has it in 5 pound and 20 pound bags, and a lot of Asian food stores will carry it. Cheap, too.

[MarionP in reply to kaypeeoh]

I think that is still the case (pyrethrins not particularly toxic to humans). Plenty of other candidates though. As a vet, you may remember your organic chemistry: too many chlorines combined with sulfur on cooh or phenyl and phenol groups )basically a benzene or more missing one hydrogen, meaning a Very energized electron, especially if combined with a functional group heavy in hyrdrocarbon, meaning fat loving...they just build up in your adipose tissue and bleed out radicals to chunk out pieces of any dna and rna that happen to be nearby, creating lots and lots of oxidation=mutations for you to reproduce, leading either to cancer, apoptosis, neural damage, or inability to properly chelate heavy metals in the rest of the ag chemicals that happen to come into your system via integument or ingestion or breathing...one of my favorite guys in college was the chancellor, i his 60s when I enrolled as a freshman, an MD who was part of the family that owned Purina, who said back then (1970s) that environmental pollution would do us in.

[pvw2 in reply to MarionP]

With low risk chemicals (3x normal), the risk is excessive exposure (not following the label) or excessive exposure (loss of containment) during manufacturing, where the chemical is in huge amounts.

[MarionP]

I can agree with the general thrust of the article. In general 24D and pyrethrins have been shown to increase the risk, but from a low incidental initial risk. It's been a tad overblown though, except if you applied it professionally and consistently and were really exposed to it a long time...because in the soil, they do tend to break down fairly quickly.

24D is not really as bad as when they made agent orange and before they knew to control the temperatures, which left a number of batches leaving over a small but very toxic amount of related chemical which was extremely carcinogenic. That's what was the really big culprit in agent orange, it it was and is very deadly, cancer wise... Manufacturing flaws. For the most part 24D doesn't really live long in the soil or on plants, it does break down. That said, you can very much feel the subjective sense of the association of farming country and higher PD, I happen to live in one, and in the retirement center in which I live, it definitely seems that more than a fair shair have PD, I have PD, and my father had PD, and we all spent nearly all our time of life in the farm country or downwind, downwater of it, getting our food, water from the chronically chemically over-flowed water tables wind and rain patterns. Good old midwest now corporate mega-operations, its why none of the antibiotics work anymore too.

Just about anything with tons of clorine molecules (the "poly" in "polychlorinated", usually meaning at least three) and combinations of them with a sulphur or a lot of "phenyls (the famous benzene rings that are so cancerous when there are two or more of them...and by the way, they are hydrocarbons, meaning largely gotten from the oil industry, that's right big oil, along with most of the plastics in this world, hydrocarbons also), means very bad news for handlers and special protections needed. Kind of like working in a coal mine or a coal-fired power plant, or down wind of the gas stack of the coal fired power plant...expect loads of many heavy metals making their way into many of the citizens in those environments.

[pvw2 in reply to MarionP]

The deadliest in oil and gas other than fire is H2S. A few breaths will kill you. But less than fatal doesn't seem to have long term effects. Low amounts would probably tie up heavy metals since their sulfides are usually insoluable. However other things are slower, more painful with lasting effects.