Farming News - Pesticide exposure and head injury linked to development of Parkinson’s disease
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Pesticide exposure and head injury linked to development of Parkinson’s disease
Although Paraquat was banned in the EU in 2007, just three years after it was licensed when a number of states including Sweden and Denmark took the EU Commission to court over the decision, the herbicide remains one of the most commonly used worldwide.
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A previous study by the US National Institutes of Health linked paraquat exposure to development of Parkinson’s disease in farm workers in 2011.
The Neurology study, published on Monday (12th November) shows that head trauma and exposure to certain toxins, combined with family history all increase the likelihood of developing the disease. The study was led by University of California researcher Pei-Chen Lee, who looked at around 1,000 people from agricultural regions of California, of which over 300 had developed Parkinson’s disease.
The team found 12 percent of people with Parkinson's had been knocked unconscious for over five minutes, and 47 percent had been exposed to paraquat in the vicinity of their home and workplace, a proportion slightly higher than a control group in which seven percent had a history of head injury and 39 percent of pesticide exposure.
Although on their own the two events were associated with a moderately increased risk of developing the disease, a combination of the two was linked to a threefold increase in the likelihood of developing Parkinson’s. The researchers said this figure was reached after taking into account the baseline risk based on the participants’ age, gender, race, education, smoking history and family history.
The study’s authors have called for further investigation, as their findings alone cannot conclusively point to a connection. However, study author Dr Beate Ritz commented that the evidence suggests exposure to environmental factors, as well as predisposition, could affect the development of Parkinson’s, stating, "While each of these two factors is associated with an increased risk of Parkinson's on their own, the combination is associated with greater risk than just adding the two factors together."