Modern environmental factors

Sorry my memories is so bad, but isn’t there the example of a South East Asian country with a high level of ME/CFS that is linked to a particular insecticide?herbicide? There was a thread on it here.

[added I was referring to South Korea, where Koreans with ME/CFS had been exposed to chemicals put into humidifiers to prevent microbial overgrowth resulting in increased levels of ME/CFS

See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36916046/ for a study using two day CPET previously posted in a thread here. ]

 

Widespread impacts to precipitation of the East Palestine Ohio train accident
19 June 2024
David A Gay, Katelan Blaydes, James J Schauer, Martin Shafer

"From these two maps, it is very clear that extreme concentrations of multiple pollutants were present over a widespread area during the days after the accident, and resulted in enhanced deposition of these pollutants to aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, including the Lakes Michigan, Erie, Ontario, and likely Huron and Superior.

From Wikipedia:

"residents report that pets and animals as far as 10 miles (16 km) from the derailment site died overnight during the controlled release of vinyl chloride.[57] In late March, CBS News reported that inhabitants have continued to experience health symptoms, despite officials asserting that no harmful chemicals were detected in the air or water. Employees of the CDC who investigated the derailment in early March also experienced symptoms.[58]"

 

This may have been posted elsewhere but this article by Cort Johnson discusses recent research comparing GWI and ME/CFS in relation to exercise and environmental toxins:

The Great Divide: Are ME/CFS and Gulf War Illness Fundamentally Different When it Comes to Exercise?
https://www.healthrising.org/blog/2024/06/16/divide-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-gulf-war-ilness/

I don’t know if any of the research referred to requires its own thread.

[added the South Korean study Cort references on Korans with ME/CFS following exposure to chemicals used in humidifiers was previously posted on this thread ]

 

The potential link to humidifier disinfectants seems to be based on this survey, though I can't find it online:

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Cort's blog is partly talking about how GWI and ME/CFS may be different because not all people with GWI have abnormal 2-day CPET:

But this seems like the same thing as long COVID vs. ME. After some inciting event (sarin gas/pesticides or SARS-CoV-2 exposure) many people develop long term symptoms, but not everyone has the symptom of exercise intolerance.

It's a weird comparison, like comparing "complications after falling off a cliff" and "brain damage" and saying these two are not the same thing because not all people who fell off a cliff have brain damage but all people who have brain damage do have brain damage.

A better comparison would be, how different are GWI and long COVID.

It's strange to say "while some GWI patients did report increased symptoms (PEM)" and then a couple sentences later "The finding of that no PEM after exercise in GWI".

This all is odd. Even if the Korean study used people that got ME after humidifier disinfectant exposure, which it's unclear they did, presumably not every person who got symptoms after HD exposure got ME. Likewise Cook's study found evidence of PEM in some people with GWI, not "no evidence".

And the last sentence ("symptomatically, GWI looks exactly like ME/CFS") doesn't even make sense if claiming one group has PEM and the other doesn't.

I fear people will take this blog to mean all people with GWI can or should exercise.

 

The Guardian: "Top Canadian scientist alleges in leaked emails he was barred from studying mystery brain illness", 3 June 2024

Follow up article: "Second Canadian scientist alleges brain illness investigation was shut down", 21 June 2024

 

I hope I don't come across as presenting anything in this thread as fact. My goal is to make people even aware it's a possibility so that maybe actual research can happen which actually can determine if it's a fact. As it stands, research or even discussion about environment causing ME seems to be virtually non-existent, but I think even a low estimate would put the possibility of it being true at least significantly higher than zero.

Of course there's the practical consideration that there is almost zero money to be made in this, as opposed to mechanism and medication research. And as you said, a lot of people that can lose a lot of money. Seems like an injustice to just sweep a real possibility under the rug for who knows how long, maybe forever, though. We do have government, which is theoretically supposed to do things for the public welfare, not to make money.

Is it counterproductive to advocate for it? Maybe, or maybe current mechanism research will never find a solution but looking for a toxin will have found it in ten years if we tried, and that should be a discussion all its own, assessing relative benefits and harms of advocating for environmental harms.

 

We have a thread discussion here

 

American Scientist: The Rise of Parkinson's Disease

Published 2020

By E. Ray Dorsey, Todd Sherer, Michael S. Okun, Bastiaan R. Bloem

"Neither our increased awareness of the disease nor our lengthening life spans can fully account for the upsurge in diagnoses that we now face. Our knowledge of another neurological disorder, multiple sclerosis, has increased too, and we have improved diagnostic tools for it. Rates for multiple sclerosis have indeed gone up, but that increase is nothing like the exponential rise of Parkinson’s (see figure below). As for aging, more people are, of course, living longer. For example, from 1900 to 2014, the number of individuals over age 65 in the United Kingdom increased about sixfold. However, over that same period, the number of deaths due to Parkinson’s disease increased almost three times faster."


The increase in the number of Parkinson’s disease cases in England cannot be explained by an aging population or better diagnosis alone. Multiple sclerosis, another neurological disease, also has comparably improved diagnostics, but has not seen the exponential rise observed in Parkinson’s deaths. Changes in coding in the 1980s likely contributed to the fluctuations in deaths recorded during this period. As for age, the rate of increase in Parkinson’s far outpaces the increase in the elderly population in the United Kingdom.
Figure adapted from R. Dorsey et al., 2020.

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"While industrialization has increased incomes and life expectancies around the world, its products and by-products are also likely increasing the rates of Parkinson’s. Air pollution began to worsen in England in the 1700s, metal production and its harmful fumes increased in the 1800s, the use of industrial chemicals rose in the 1920s, and synthetic pesticides—many of which are nerve toxins—were introduced in the 1940s. All are linked to Parkinson’s—people with the most exposure have higher rates of the disease than the general population.

The evidence for this connection is overwhelming. Countries that have experienced the least industrialization have the lowest rates of the disease, whereas those that are undergoing the most rapid transformation, such as China, have the highest rates of increase. Specific metals, pesticides, and other chemicals have all been tied to Parkinson’s in numerous human studies. When animals are exposed to many of these substances in lab experiments, they develop the typical characteristics of the disease.

Agricultural areas have the highest rates of Parkinson’s. In Nebraska, the rates of the disease are two to four times higher in the state’s rural, agricultural parts than in urban Omaha, according to a 2004 study in Movement Disorders. In Canada, investigators have found an almost perfect correlation between areas with the highest pesticide use and the highest rates of disease, as documented in a 1987 study in the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences. In France, rural areas have the highest rates of Parkinson’s, as do the regions with the most vineyards, which often require intense pesticide use, according to a 2017 study in the European Journal of Epidemiology.

Farmers who are exposed to certain pesticides have a higher risk of developing the disease. In one 1998 study published in Neurology, the risk of developing the disease for farmers was 170 percent greater than that for nonfarmers. And the longer farmers have worked with pesticides, the greater their risk."

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"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had at one time proposed banning one of the chemicals that is tied to Parkinson’s, a solvent called trichloroethylene. But after lobbying by the chemical industry, the EPA decided in 2017 to postpone the ban indefinitely. The uses of trichloroethylene have been so numerous and widespread—in washing away grease, cleaning silicon wafers, removing spots in dry cleaning, and even, until the 1970s, decaffeinating coffee—that almost all of us have been exposed to it at some point in our lives. Some of these uses continue today. Almost half of Superfund sites—land so polluted that the EPA or the responsible parties have to clean it up—are contaminated with trichloroethylene. Thousands of other sites are polluted across the country.

As a result, as reported by the EPA, up to 30 percent of the U.S. drinking water supply has been contaminated with trichloroethylene. Because it readily evaporates from groundwater and soil, the solvent, like radon, can enter homes or offices through the air, undetected. Parkinson’s is not even the most concerning safety risk. According to the EPA, trichloroethylene also causes cancer.

But trichloroethylene is only one dangerous chemical that we have failed to protect ourselves against. Paraquat is a pesticide so toxic that 32 countries, including China, have banned it. Exposure to the chemical increases the risk of Parkinson’s by 150 percent, according to a 2011 study in Environmental Health Perspectives. Yet the EPA has done little. And as the agency charged with protecting our environment sits, paraquat’s use on U.S. agricultural fields has doubled over the past decade, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Pesticide National Synthesis Project.

The nerve toxin chlorpyrifos is the most widely used insecticide in the country, drenching golf courses and dozens of crops, including almonds, cotton, grapes, oranges, and apples. It has been linked not only to Parkinson’s but also to problems with brain development in children. Again, the EPA has shelved a ban. When a federal court stepped in to take action against the chemical, the Trump administration appealed. And in July 2019, in response to a court ordering a final ruling, the EPA decided that it would allow continued use of chlorpyrifos."

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"Even though it was banned half a century ago, DDT persists in the environment—and in our food supply. It becomes more concentrated as it makes its way up the chain to human consumption. The pesticide is then stored in our fatty tissues.

In 2003 and 2004, more than 30 years after the insecticide was banned, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tested the blood of about 2,000 people ages 12 and older. The researchers were looking for DDT and its metabolite, or breakdown product, dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE). They found in their 2009 report that “a small proportion of the population had measurable DDT [and] most of the [U.S.] population had detectable DDE” in their blood. For Parkinson’s, what matters more are the concentrations of chemicals in the brain, which may be several times those in blood, according to the Extension Toxicology Network, because DDT dissolves in fat."

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"Vietnam veterans and up to 4 million Vietnamese came into contact with Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

There has been no large-scale study of the effect of this exposure on the health of the Vietnamese or war veterans. Smaller studies, however, have linked Agent Orange to many problems in these populations, including birth defects, cancer, and Parkinson’s, as summarized in a 2007 paper in Science by Richard Stone of the Veterans Health Administration. The evidence is sufficient that veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange and now have Parkinson’s are eligible for disability compensation and health care from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs."

 

The more I learn, the more mad I get. The world is being drenched in thousands of newly created chemicals and every day more are being created. For some reason, the standard operating precedure is to release new chemicals after cursory safety studies, then decades later when people start dropping from disease, it's the people's responsibility to prove the chemical did it. And then if common sense manages to beat out the massive corporations and their expensive lawyers and their lobbyists, then maybe the chemical gets banned, and the company gets a little fine - cost of doing business. And then on to the next one.

It's not even practically possible to test for all the possible long term effects of the massive variety of chemicals being produced. The assumption is that they don't cause cancer or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, until someone proves they do.

Maybe if the ones making these decisions were some unbiased altruistic machines, I would trust these risks and tradeoffs. But the ones making the decisions are extremely biased. And extremely powerful. They can pay to put their chemicals on the market and pay to keep them there. And pay for the propaganda to convince the world it's all good.

I am horrified. Until the world has some sort of awakening and paradigm shift, we'll be chasing our tails making drugs to treat symptoms as they come up one after another like whack-a-mole.

 

I found a couple journals that are dedicated to environmental toxicity and related topics.

Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology

"JESEE publishes novel results and significant advances in exposure science, exposure analysis, and environmental epidemiology to understand human health impacts of the full range of environmental stressors (chemical, biological, physical, psychosocial). JESEE is particularly interested in publishing research that integrates exposure knowledge with information from across scientific disciplines to contribute solutions for the most pressing environmental and public health concerns."

Environmental Toxicology

"Environmental Toxicology is an international journal providing a forum for academics to discuss the toxicity and toxicology of environmental pollutants. We investigate the substances affecting our air, dust, sediment, soil and water, covering ecotoxicity, soil contamination, air & water pollution, endocrine disruption, immunotoxicity, & more.

Our journal aims to improve all species lives on Earth. We consider natural toxins and their impacts as well as the impacts of anthropogenic chemicals. These topics are studied in relation to public health and environmental policies that keep us safe."

Edit: More journals:

Journal of Environmental Exposure Assessment

"Humans are exposed to a wide range of chemical contaminants from cradle to grave. Evaluating the risk to health from this requires accurate assessment of the timing, pathways, and magnitude of exposure. The Journal of Environmental Exposure Assessment welcomes high quality manuscripts that address all aspects of human exposure to organic and inorganic chemical contaminants. These include but are not limited to: exposure modelling, experimental biomonitoring studies, as well as those examining external exposure via different pathways such as diet, inhalation, drinking water, dermal uptake, and indoor dust ingestion."

Toxics

"The Journal accepts papers describing work that furthers our understanding of the exposure, effects, and risks of chemicals and materials in humans and the natural environment as well as approaches to assess and/or manage the toxicological and ecotoxicological risks of chemicals and materials. The journal covers a wide range of toxic substances, including metals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, biocides, nanomaterials, and polymers such as micro- and mesoplastics."