In  today’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof (pictured here) lays to rest the notion that Parkinson’s Disease is hereditary. “Clue to Unlocking Parkinson’s May Be All Around Us” is the latest in a series of articles about environmental health Kristof has been writing for the Times. Here’s the LINK.  He tells us it was back in 1958 that a chemical company (he doesn’t mention which one – probably to keep the lawsuits at bay) discovered a weed killer they had on the market was attacking the central nervous system. The company dealt with this the same way the big asbestos companies – like the Johns Manville Corporation – dealt with the fact their workers exposed to asbestos were dying. They covered it up. And they continued to cover it up as the evidence kept accumulating that these chemicals were killing their workers.

The weed killer company kept on selling it despite evidence that doses were causing tremors in mice and rats. “That’s because the herbicide, paraquat, was sublime at wiping out weeds,” Kristof writes. “And it was profitable. Over the decades it became a ‘blockbuster’ as one executive proudly declared, By 2018, some 17 million pounds of it were used across the United States, double the figure from six years earlier. As industry  boomed and agricultural and industrial toxins like paraquat proliferated in the postwar period, so has something else: Parkinson’s Disease.”

My own personal experience with Parkinson’s Disease, caring for my husband Jim, who suffered with this terrible illness for over ten years, confirms everything in Kristof’s report. That the cause of PD is exposure to toxic chemicals, not something you inherit. Jim remembered riding his bike in the early 50’s behind the trucks blasting out heavy sprays of DDT to kill the mosquitos. He and his friends thought it was a great way to cool off on a hot summer day. It would be a decade later when scientists discovered that DDT was pure poison for humans to breathe and it was eventually banned by the U.S. government. Another close friend, a professor at Wellesley College, recently died of complications of Parkinson’s Disease. After years of research he was convinced he had PD from exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam.