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Trichloroethylene: An invisible cause of Parkinson’s disease?
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoThis is scary. I've never heard of this chemical but it looks like something I likely come in contact with almost daily.
- dboreham 4y agoHopefully not so much these days. Those of us who worked in the Electronics industry in the 1980s did come into contact daily.
- jrmski 4y agoIndeed, one of Google's campuses in Mountain View has (or at least had) TCE vapor leftover from previous industry. https://www.theverge.com/2013/2/22/4018768/tce-vapors-found-in-google-mountain-view-office https://www.theverge.com/2013/2/22/4018768/tce-vapors-found-...
- hammock 4y agoThe entire city of Mountain View is literally one giant EPA Superfund site (look it up) and I wouldn’t go near any of those beautiful creeks they have running around or play in the soil…
- uejfiweun 4y agoI just did look it up and I’d seems the superfund area is just a 17 acre zone around a trailer park?
- hammock 4y agoThere are at least eight different sites in Mountain View https://www.epa.gov/superfund/search-superfund-sites-where-you-live https://www.epa.gov/superfund/search-superfund-sites-where-y... Separately, there are many orgs which track and map the TCE plumes in the groundwater and you can find that info as well through google
- akiselev 4y agoNote that the map only shows National Priority List sites. They're considered to be the most polluted but that doesn't mean that sites not on the NPL list aren't also a concern (my county only has one NPL site but over a dozen non-NPL contaminated areas)
- inferiorhuman 4y agoIt's not just Mountain View. All of Silicon Valley is dotted with superfund sites. Years ago IBM got sued by former employees about exposure to carcinogens at their San Jose factories. IBM won, but, yeah, I'd still be careful. And then there's the military waste…
- hammock 4y agoYes good point about the military waste. Hunters Point in SF comes to mind. A highly contaminated radioactive site that required extensive soil remediation. A lot of the radioactive soil was just sent to regular state landfills. Then after they had started building multi family homes on top of the site, they found out the cleanup company was falsifying soil samples and the site was still highly radioactive. I hope that situation is not typical of how Superfund sites are handled
- inferiorhuman 4y agoWhat Lennar did in BVHP ought to be criminal. Treasure Island (also an ex-military Superfund site) is a mess of radioactive waste on its way to becoming luxury condos as well. Oh well, it will be a fun cancer cluster in a couple decades. AMD, Intel, Fairchild, IBM, HP, Nat Semi, Raytheon, Teledyne, Westinghouse, and LLNL all gifted the Bay Area with Superfund sites with most concentrated in Santa Clara county. Even stuff that doesn't rise to the level of a Superfund site can still be far too polluted to develop (e.g. Brisbane).
- nraynaud 4y agoThat’s what used to run in parts cleaners until a few decades ago, so all body shops, mechanics, job shops and a ton of factories had those.
- myself248 4y agoReally? My dad's parts cleaner always had gasoline in it.
- scotty79 4y agoI remeber it being available on the shelves in my childhood. It's also narcotic and carcinogenic. Banned in EU since 2010.
- Stratoscope 4y agoFor additional reading, here is the popularized article that led me to this research: https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-warn-common-cleaning-chemical-linked-to-500-increased-risk-of-parkinsons-disease/ https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-warn-common-cleaning-che...
- burlesona 4y agoThis is saying this chemical is used to decaffeinate coffee. So what level of it is left in the resulting coffee beans?
- nraynaud 4y agoZero, it’s highly volatile.
- scotty79 4y ago> This is saying this chemical is used to decaffeinate coffee. Until 50 years ago.
- selectodude 4y agoThey use supercritical CO2 now.
- jb1991 4y agoOnly some decaf coffee is made that way, there are actually four major methods now for making decaf, only two of them do not involve chemicals. Always research the methods of your decaf coffee vendor before you buy!
- davidthewatson 4y agoIt's a good question. It's easy to locate Swiss water decaf in the US now, but apparently that wasn't true in the mid-80's, so the answer depends on when and where the caffeine was extracted from the coffee. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/wellness/1986/02/26/decaf-extracting-the-kick/7c60aad9-2a75-4575-ae2b-c8b5d6dd2b85/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/wellness/19...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Ccecil 4y agoI had a bottle of this stuff I recently hazmatted. Someone gave it to me from the 80's. They used to sell solvents to the electronics industry...then the CFC/Ozone regulations caused them to require to shut down. He has stories about mixing TCE and Freon...55 gallon drums of it. As far as I know he doesn't have Parkinsons but that doesn't mean anything. Apparently, this stuff was great for cleaning electronics PCBs but clearly it is super bad for you. I am not sure how you could slightly smell it and not realize it...has a very strong "I cause cancer" smell to it.
- LinuxBender 4y agohas a very strong "I cause cancer" smell to it I second this. I used it to clean electronic systems in the military and they did not really give much training on this chemical which surprised me as they trained extensively on much less dangerous chemicals. Some of my team members liked inhaling the fumes.
- sbradford26 4y agoIBM had to do a massive cleanup of the stuff at their original site in Endicott NY where they made PCBs. The locals call it the plume, apparently IBM just dumped Trichloroethylene as well as other chemicals on the ground for years in some of their buildings. Timeline of events: https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/2016/05/20/timeline-endicotts-tce-dilemma/84566228/ https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/2016/05/20/ti... EPA Source: https://www.epa.gov/hwcorrectiveactioncleanups/hazardous-waste-cleanup-ibm-corporation-endicott-new-york https://www.epa.gov/hwcorrectiveactioncleanups/hazardous-was...
- userbinator 4y agoI am not sure how you could slightly smell it and not realize it...has a very strong "I cause cancer" smell to it. Keep in mind that many people still deliberately inhale the products of combustion of tobacco. I don't smoke, but most chlorocarbons smell good --- clean and slightly sweet is how I'd describe the fragrance.
- Maursault 4y ago
- lutera 4y agoAnyone with Chemistry knowledge - Is this stuff related to DDT insecticide in any way?
- scythe 4y agoBasically no. They're both chlorocarbons, but the resemblance ends there. DDT doesn't even contain any nonaromatic sp2 carbons.
- rmason 4y agoThank you for posting this account. My grandfather had Parkinson's and I have followed news on the disease my entire life. In my grandfather's case he owned a slaughterhouse (in Detroit) and in an accident was hit in the head by a meat hook. I spent twenty years in the fertilizer industry. I always read the chemical sheets on everything we sold. Paraquat which this article mentions was the single most toxic herbicide that we sold. My bosses wife got a small amount mixed with water in her hair once. She grabbed a comb to try and thin the amount. When she stopped combing she examined her comb and it looked like a melted glob of plastic. This shocked all of us and she very quickly went and washed her hair.
- eternityforest 4y agoI think this is what someone I knew used. He had all kinds of health problems, diabetes, vision issues, heart problems, and he suspected it was from some electronics related chlorinated solvent. It's also in brake cleaner, which I have no idea how anyone tolerates that stuff. I've never in my life been in a situation where I wanted a stronger solvent than acetone, I'm very skeptical most of these harsh cleaning chemicals are actually needed outside specialist industrial uses. There's a lot of chemicals that do basically the same thing with widely varying desire to kill you. I don't understand why people like the dangerous ones. They say it works better but what does that mean? Saves a few minutes? Gets it cleaner? Are people seeing failures in the field because of the less toxic alternatives leaving residue? Does it even matter at all how clean or not some of this stuff is? Is it just gonna get covered in more grease in 5 minutes?
- Gordonjcp 4y agoThe stuff I have here says "C6-C7, n-alkanes, isoalkanes, cyclics, <5% n-hexane. So basically, "tin of shit that's too thin to call petrol", here in the UK. I haven't seen the chlorinated stuff for years, either.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y agoI use isopropyl alcohol for cleaning bicycle brake discs - that evaporates away without leaving residue, but you don't want to be inhaling too many fumes from it.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoPretty much any of this stuff - including the chlorinated stuff - is okay as long as you're using it somewhere well-ventilated and not making a habit of getting it on you.
- m463 4y agoI remember that if you use brake cleaner on hot parts, you would get a really really toxic chemical. EDIT: phosgene gas. Chlorinated brake cleaner containing tetrachloroethylene will, on exposure to high temperatures (above 500 °F (260 °C)) or strong UV light, decompose into phosgene and hydrogen chloride, both of which are extremely dangerous if inhaled. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_cleaner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_cleaner
- 29athrowaway 4y agoTrichloroethylene for decaf sounds as an idea as bad as tetraethyl lead for fuel, freon for refrigeration, teflon for non-stick pans, glyphosate for weed control and PFAS for microwave popcorn bags and tampons. This is fine™.
- lloeki 4y agoI seem to recall teflon is completely neutral to the human body, it's the chemical used to glue it to the pan that is the issue.
- stephen_g 4y agoYes. It can emit toxic gasses at high temperatures though, so I'd recomment always trying to keep it under 200°C (390° F). (My pans are a ceramic non-stick so I don't have to worry, but they are more expensive).
- lloeki 4y ago> keep it under 200°C (390° F) Conveniently it seems that the smoking point of olive oil is about that, while its boiling point is ~300°C (570°F), which give nice physical cues without having a thermometer.
- actionfromafar 4y agoSo, if there's smoke, you are too late already.
- sethammons 4y agoPSA for bird owners: that off gassing is highly lethal to birds. You shouldn't cook with teflon and have birds. They can die in minutes even when on the other side of the house.
- szundi 4y agoQuestion mark at the end of title never means anything good, pass
- once_inc 4y agoBetteridge's Law: | "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'."
- blue1 4y agoIt was in typewriter corrector fluid. I remember the smell.
- djmips 4y agoOh yes! I vividly remember that now that you mention it!
- JPLeRouzic 4y agoThanks for posting this, neurodegenrative diseases are horrible but at the same time this is a review of the literature. They are reporting about feeding mice with 400 mg/kg/day during 6 to 8 weeks. For humans, this is equivalent to 33mg/kg/day. So for a 80kg body: 2.6g, half a sugar cube every day. If you feed an animal (including us) with unreasonable levels of most anything you will observe weird stuff. For example feeding mice with high fat diets gives them a kind of Alzheimer disease.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoThat's a lot of anything to dose with. It reminds me a bit of the datasheet for sodium chloride - common table salt - that describes the skin contact LD50 (the amount that is a lethal dose for 50% of a population of test rabbits) as ">25kg". So what do we read from that? If you drop a sack of salt weighing as much as an eight-year-old child on a series of rabbits, roughly half of them will die? I can't say I'm *very* surprised...
- eshack94 4y agoThe last part of your comment feels like it should be the punchline for an xkcd comic.
- JPLeRouzic 4y agoHa, ha, sorry if it looks odd, English is not my native tongue.
- DuckFeathers 4y agoNot very different from study designs used by pharmaceuticals to show that their new patent-pending drug outperforms the generic one. They deliberately design it so that the competing drug isn't the right dose or somehow not administered correctly... and if someone tries to fight them, their license is taken away.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> So what do we read from that? If you drop a sack of salt weighing as much as an eight-year-old child on a series of rabbits, roughly half of them will die? No, you should read exactly what it says. If you put a series of rabbits in skin contact with 25kg of salt each, less than half of them will die. That's how we know the LD50 is greater than 25 kilograms. I assume 25 kilograms was the limit of testing, and that's why the result is reported the way it is. I'm also willing to go out on a limb and assume the number of test rabbits that died from being put in skin contact with 25kg of salt was zero, which is less than half of the test pool as long as it contained a positive number of rabbits.
- once_inc 4y agoThere's also a very high correlation between PD and insecticide use. Cows eating grass treated with insecticide (sometimes because a farmer on the plot upwind of their meadow uses it) produce milk that contains high concentrations of insecticides. People drinking lots of dairy ingest those insecticides and develop PD.
- code_duck 4y agoMy grandmother retired to a farm where she used a ton of herbicides and insecticides (endless battle agains fire ants) including DDT and who knows what else. She ended up with a Parkinson’s-like condition - supposedly not Parkinson’s, but same symptoms. I’m not sure how they determined that.
- throwaway09432 4y agoDoes carbon filter this stuff?
- RandomWorker 4y agoFor those interested most coffee is not decaffeinated with this chemical. Most use a critical CO2 process.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoI posted this comment[0], a few weeks ago, about my own experience with trichlor. Nasty stuff, but also very useful, and Those With Money like it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34887615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34887615
- thaumasiotes 4y agoAnd it's go, boys, go They'll time your every breath And every day you're in this place you're two days nearer death But you go There's overtime and bonus opportunities galore The young men like their money and they all come back for more But soon you're knockin' on and you look older than you should For every bob made on the job you pay with flesh and blood I'm somewhat fascinated by the image the song paints of a factory that will happily pay above-market rates for as many hours as you care to work there.
- jollyllama 4y agoI've heard that song before; is it specifically about trichloroethylene?
- thaumasiotes 4y agoIt appears to be about a nylon factory run by Imperial Chemical Industries: https://ehc.english.ucsb.edu/?p=19619 https://ehc.english.ucsb.edu/?p=19619
- HollowEyes 4y agoWhat hobby products will you find Trichloroethylene in/will be exposed to?
- tyingq 4y agoPage 2 here has some actual brands/products that it's in: https://prhe.ucsf.edu/sites/g/files/tkssra341/f/EDF%20First%20Ten%20List%20Products.pdf https://prhe.ucsf.edu/sites/g/files/tkssra341/f/EDF%20First%...
- p0nce 4y agoMy uncle's job was to clean elevators using TCE and died at about 25yo from this.
- lyind 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichloroethylene#Anaesthesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichloroethylene#Anaesthesia
- giantg2 4y ago"solvent that is clear, colorless, volatile, nonflammable, and environmentally persistent" Call me stupid, but can it really be volatile and persistent? I'd expect volatility and persistence to be negatively correlated.
- KMag 4y agoIt can evaporate, but doesn't chemically decompose very quickly. Its tendency to evaporate isn't very relevant if it's in your groundwater, for instance.
- giantg2 4y agoI would think od volatile as reacting. If it just means evaporating, then I guess that makes sense.
- mauvehaus 4y agoPersistent, in this case, means it doesn't break down readily. As it happens once it does eventually break down the resulting stuff is also pretty nasty: first you get 1-2-DCE, and then vinyl chloride.
- ChancyChance 4y agoGreat. I spent all four years in highschool rebuilding car engines practically swimming in this stuff because my friends and I used it as a degreaser. We didn't swallow it, but we did get blisters on our hands and it turned our skin white and ashy. Once I left highschool I stopped working on cars (discovered computers), but I wonder how screwed we are, or are going to be (we're all nearing our 60's even though we still have the maturity of 20 somethings).
- pram 4y agoMy dad was an aircraft mechanic and he got a ton of tumors in his arm from whatever cleaning liquids they used at the time. It has given me a lifetime of paranoia, always wearing gloves when I’m working on some mechanical thing. All that shit is probably in the ground water though.
- BoorishBears 4y agoWhat's sad about this is that in 2023 there's still a subculture of mechanics who think it's "weak" or "unmanly" to use things like gloves when working on cars (and I'm pretty sure that extends to other forms of hands on work) We don't have the excuse earlier generations had, we know this stuff causes cancer, we know it seeps into your skin and doesn't come out just because you washed your hands well, but people still don't see a problem with going fist deep in used engine oil or dumping half a can of brake cleaner on something in an enclosed garage
- uoaei 4y agoTwo football star athletes at a local high school (poor, majority-Black neighborhood) died of mysterious brain tumors about 5 years ago. Their high school is a few hundred feet down a gentle grade from a row of auto shops. The parents of the deceased were certain for years that the auto shops were the problem, and brought it up repeatedly to city council and the mayor, but no one acted on it. No one even tested the groundwater until a routine inspection of the high school's heating system in the basement a couple years later, where they found extremely unhealthy levels of TCE. I'm not sure if they ever started enforcing things better, but knowing the local government I doubt it.
- Zigurd 4y agoDamn. Checks label on CRC QD (quick dry) contact cleaner. No TCE, but it's the all-star team of halogenated stuff that will volatilize as quick as possible.
- yung234 4y agoMore generally there is way too much crap in the environment and it is past time for people to start protesting this. We are likely paying a price for this in rising rates of obesity and deteriorating mental health. It's time for cleaner outdoor air, better indoor air quality and ventilation and a tighter rein on the proliferating number of chemicals that surround us. As the item notes, Parkinson's rates have been increasing for some time and are expected to continue to increase in the coming decades.
- angst_ridden 4y agoPeople are expendable. There's a new crop every year. Corporate profits, on the other hand ...
- algoatecorn 4y ago[Environmental contamination] is way less of an explanatory variable of obesity and mental health than [dietary choice and activity level]. Its effect resides in the error term.
- pjc50 4y agoThe (extremely long) blog argues otherwise: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-part-i-mysteries/ https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p... I don't entirely agree with what they have to say, especially when they search for a possible target chemical, but they provide a whole bunch of contradictory evidence against the naive laziness hypothesis. Of which the most convincing argument is lab animals: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2010.1890 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2010... Lab animals do not have control over their diet and activity level, and yet are becoming more obese.
- JamesBarney 4y agoThere are a couple of issues drawing too much from this study. 1. They haven't found any mechanistic evidence to support this. 2. All of these populations had access to manufactured food. (Either human or pet food) 3. This is really only one study, not really a field of research. IT seems like the theory manufactured food has gotten tasty since the 80's would also explain this data.
- frankus 4y agoAn interesting quirk of TCE is that it's a "dense non-aqueous phase liquid" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_non-aqueous_phase_liquid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_non-aqueous_phase_liquid), which means that it sinks in water generally and groundwater specifically, making it hard to remediate.
- boniechismar 4y agoIn July last year, I started on Parkinson’s disease TREATMENT PROTOCOL from Natural Herbs Centre (ww w. Naturalherbscentre. com). One month into the treatment, I made a significant recovery. After I completed the recommended treatment, almost all my symptoms were gone, great improvement with my movement and balance. Its been a year, life has been amazing
- bomniechismar 4y agoMy husband has Parkinson’s disease, he is about 63 years old it was diagnosed 2 years ago. It was getting more difficult to live for him, because of stiff muscles he couldn’t even move. Mirapex and levodopa medicines were given, but didn’t give much relief. He couldn’t eat food without choking. I thought this might be the last stage and the medications he was given did not help at all, so I started to do alot of research on Ayurveda treatments, I was introduced to Health Natural Centre and their Parkinson’s Ayurveda Protocol. He started on the Ayurveda Treatment last year, his symptoms gradually diminished including his vocal cord spasm, Muscle Weakness, Tremors and Difficulty with swallowing. Reach them at naturalherbscentre.com , he is getting active again since starting this treatment, he is able to walk again ( down the street and back ) he has also resumed exercising to strengthen muscles!! God Bless all PD Caregivers. Stay Strong, take small moments throughout the day to thank yourself, to love your self, and pray to whatever faith, star, spiritual force you believe in and ask for strength. I can personally vouch for these remedy but you would probably need to decide what works best for you.
- bomniechismar 4y agoMy husband who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease for 2 years at the age of 75 had all his symptoms reversed with Ayurveda medicine from naturalherbscentre. com after undergoing their Parkinson’s natural protocol. God Bless all Parkinson’s Caregivers. Stay Strong, take small moments throughout the day to thank yourself, to love your self, and pray to whatever faith, star, spiritual force you believe in and ask for strength. I can personally vouch for these remedy but you would probably need to decide what works best for you.