21 ms·
Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease
- version_five 3y agoThat chemical is trichloroethylene. Even Science does clickbait now.
- tartrate 3y agoNot sure I'd call it clickbait, and they do mention it right away. It'd be like putting a mathematical expression in the headline of an article about neural networks.
- SnowHill9902 3y ago“Tricholoroethylene strongly linked to Parkinson”
- CodeAndCuffs 3y agoMy first thought would be, "What is this? Is it a common chemical?". Then I'd probably call the article click bait even though it says it's common early in the article.
- swarnie 3y agoWhat is Tricholoroethylene? "A widely used chemical" ....
- visarga 3y agoa colorless, volatile liquid that is primarily used as a solvent
- rob74 3y ago"Widely used chemical Tricholoroethylene strongly linked to Parkinson"
- throwaway2037 3y agoUpvote here. Good suggestion. This would be more accurate and less click bait-y.
- robertlagrant 3y agoRenowned author Meredith Wadman
- xenonite 3y ago“Parkinson links strongly from widely used chemical Tricholoroethylene”
- baq 3y agoFunny how making an informative title for a piece of text is on the curriculum but good-for-readers titles don't earn money... so writers have to learn good-for-ARR titles instead
- croes 3y agoImagine this headline A widely known basketball team wins NBA finals Clickbait?
- swarnie 3y agoDepends on the audience i guess, im not sure i can name a basketball team. Does the average reader of science.org know what trichloroethylene is without a prompt?
- doctor_eval 3y agoI read science.org, I’m pretty average, and I don’t know what it is.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago>> A widely known basketball team wins NBA finals > Depends on the audience i guess, im not sure i can name a basketball team. It's bordering on tautology. After all, who else would win National Basketball Association finals - a soccer team? A more astute reader will also observe that NBA finals aren't something casually won by random teams nobody heard of - by the time they get to the finals, the team is already widely-known. Equally informative, but non-clickbait version of the headline, would be "NBA finals complete" - or, for basketball fans, "Today is 18th of June, 2023".
- rdl 3y agoI know of it as "dry cleaning chemical and why you don't want to buy a building which used to contain a dry cleaning shop with on-premises processing".
- seanhunter 3y agoYes and a straw man also. Widely known and widely used are definitely not the same. More people know the names of basketball teams than know the significance of TCE.
- throwaway2037 3y agoNot to ruffle any feathers, but I notice this trend on HN also. People will post something the city they live in and drop all kinds of hints... except the name. Same for employers. Strange. It's like we need to play the old boardgame "Guess Who?"!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hinkley 3y agoWhich automobile manufacturer do you work for? A major one.
- el_benhameen 3y agoThis would give me less personal context than the original.
- hackernewds 3y agoAnd also be less clickbait-y
- riceart 3y agoWidely known ambiguity with verb tense in English used to write clickbait. “Once widely used chemical in the 70s…” or a “Formerly widely used chemical” - was that so hard?
- softwaredoug 3y agoNot clickbait when they tell you right away and give you a detailed story of the context and evidence behind what they learned
- croes 3y agoOf course clickbait because you need to click to get the name.
- kadoban 3y agoYeah, because if you had the name you'd have no further questions. There's just no way to condense enough important information into the headline, and the chemical name would mean nothing for 99% of people.
- croes 3y agoIf I already know TCE is dangerous and need to be avoided I might not need to read the article or I could if I need further information. But if I need to click to get the basic information it's clickbait.
- j45 3y agoCould the article be primarily written for people who don’t know about TCE?
- croes 3y agoThey would read it if TCE is in the title. But so all are forced to read it because Parkinson concerns everybody. Why not simply "Widely used TCE strongly linked to Parkinson's disease" Key message in the title, further information in the article.
- bumby 3y agoBut it’s not written for you specifically. Since this is related to a Marine base, I’ll give you an example. What if the headline was “2/4 gets new Bradleys” To a Marine, it’s a clear headline: 2nd Battalion 4th Marine Regiment gets new armored personnel carriers”. But to a laymen a better headline would be “Marine unit gets new Tanks.” The former would be almost deliberately meaningless to a casual reader.
- rightbyte 3y agoI have no clue what trichloroethylene is so I think the title is fair. It could be a stone for all I know.
- wiredfool 3y agoA very effective organic solvent. Used in dry cleaning and formerly in chip making in SV.
- peterfirefly 3y agoAnd in Tipp-ex/liquid paper/white out. The smell was quite interesting. They switched to a replacement solvent that wasn't nearly as good.
- Joker_vD 3y agoIt's also highly toxic, works as an anaesthetic (i.e., knocks you out); it also decomposes into phosgene and hydrochloride when exposed to light and air. But on the other hand, it is a great organic solvent.
- voisin 3y agoIf memory serves me this is the chemical at the basis of the John Travolta movie A Civil Action, which is based on the true story covered in the excellent book of the same title.
- q1w2 3y agoThere are two other issues with this... 1. The authors only studied two military camps. One with high TCE levels, and one with low TCE levels. But, obviously, there might be any number of other factors that are different between the two camps with a causal relationship to Parkinson's Disease. 2. There is an active class action lawsuit from this military camp. Doing a limited study that benefits one side of a class action lawsuit should always be taken with some extra skepticism and evaluated for conflicts of interest.
- PaulHoule 3y agoNot that it proves anything but one of my uncles was a marine who spent a lot of time at Camp Jejune. He died of ALS, another neurodegenerative condition, and he got care for it through the VA as the marines thought it was a service-related condition.
- robertlagrant 3y agoI think the phrase "linked to" should be banned in science-adjacent journalism. It's too vague. "Antibiotics are linked to disease", just negatively. Any correlation can be called a "link". Far too vague.
- dandy23 3y agoThey should have done it with dry cleaners instead. Selected from 100s or 1000s of shops.
- mock-possum 3y ago“Scientists discover common chemical strongly linked to Parkinson… and you’ll ever believe what it is!”
- 9935c101ab17a66 3y agoI disagree strongly. The article very quickly discloses the identity of the chemical the title alludes to, and including the full chemical compound in the title is a poor choice for a variety of reasons.
- eimrine 3y agoWhen you drink your coffee without caffeine in your 30 for escaping a harm from caffeine, but end up with Parkinson in your 60+.
- maxerickson 3y agoFortunately it's a big increase in relative risk and not absolute risk: By 2021, 279 of the Camp Lejeune veterans, or 0.33%, had developed Parkinson’s versus 151 of those at Camp Pendleton, or 0.21%. After adjusting for differences in age, sex, race, and ethnicity, the scientists found veterans from Camp Lejeune had a 70% higher rate of Parkinson’s disease than the Camp Pendleton group. I guess it can be encouraging news for some people. My mom died with Parkinson's and I've almost certainly had less exposure to TCE than she did. I'm aware that there isn't really a known genetic link, it's just nice to occasionally see evidence that it can be exposure related. The increase in prevalence mentioned in the article isn't good, but that can be due to better techniques for diagnosing it.
- hgsgm 3y ago1 in 1000 increase in lifetime risk of something horrible, from one source, is pretty bad, if there are many similarly dangerous sources.
- coldtea 3y agoNever exchange the "devil you know", especially if it's natural and has been used for centuries by billions, for some novel lab-made crap, proprietary owned, and marketed to death. Not to mention when getting it has been the whole point of drinking coffee in the first place.
- criley2 3y agoThis is a rather explicit use of the Naturalistic Fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
- 3y ago
- wouldbecouldbe 3y agoIt was heavily contaminated water that they all consumed, of the 279 veterans there were 0.33% cases vs the statistically expected 0.21%. Which means they found 9 people with Parkinson, instead of the expected 6. [edit] ignore the comment, read it wrong, its 279 cases
- maxerickson 3y agoThe 279 is identified cases of Parkinson's, the study included tens of thousands of people.
- tuukkah 3y agoDifferent order of magnitude too: 0.33% of 279 people would be 0.92 people, not 9 people.
- pmoriarty 3y ago"After adjusting for differences in age, sex, race, and ethnicity, the scientists found veterans from Camp Lejeune had a 70% higher rate of Parkinson’s disease than the Camp Pendleton group." Why didn't they adjust for socioeconomic status? Wealthier people tend to be able to afford better medical care, live in healthier environments, eat healthier foods, etc. These could all be confounding factors, and a study like this should take them in to account.
- calvinmorrison 3y agoPresumably there's already known risk factors studied thoroughly for race, age, and sex. So they adjusted the numbers to account for that and their focus was on locality.
- AdamN 3y agoAlot of socioeconomic factors are baked into the above co-morbidities but anyway, is there a reason to think that veterans of two different marine camps have significantly different socioeconomic profiles from eachother?
- notakio 3y agoIn this case (Lejeune vs Pendleton), there would likely not be a substantial socioeconomic difference between the collective backgrounds of Marines who did basic training at either one. But comparing either camp to OCS at Quantico would, in fact, show a pretty stark delineation between the socioeconomic backgrounds.
- alistairSH 3y agoThey looked at officer vs enlisted, which would cover any socioeconomic difference between basic vs OCS, no?
- pmoriarty 3y agoThere might not have been much difference between them at the time, but who knows how their lives went after their time there? Some might have wound up being relatively wealthy compared to the rest, and that could have influenced their long-term health. We won't know until we check.
- Alex3917 3y ago> It inhibits complex 1, the leading enzyme in a chain of reactions that convert food to energy in cellular organelles called mitochondria. So they upside is that it probably significantly reduces your risk of both cancer and type 2 diabetes, which you're >100x more likely to die from than Parkinson's. There are even longevity bloggers, like Peter Attia, who advocate that everyone should be taking mitochondrial complex 1 inhibitors.
- enkid 3y agoIs there any evidence it actually reduces those risks, or is it speculation?
- voisin 3y agoMitochondrial disfunction is the basis for a huge number of cancers. See “Tripping over the Truth: The Metabolic Theory of Cancer”[0] for a good history of it. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23496164 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23496164
- MrBuddyCasino 3y agoRay Peat liked this comment.
- Alex3917 3y agoGo on Google Scholar and read through the research on Metformin. Metformin has a complex mechanism of action, acting is as a Mitochondrial Complex 1 inhibitor in some cases but not others. But the consensus seems to be that it reduces cancer risk by about 30%, relating to its capacity as a Mitochondrial Complex 1 inhibitor. Also, if watch Jerry McLaughlin's YouTube talks about pawpaws and cancer, he summarizes the research that mainly focuses on the mechanisms of action of annonaceous acetogenins in fighting cancer -- these are also Mitochondrial Complex 1 inhbitors, similar to Metformin but much stronger. Basically these chemicals cause a buildup of radical oxides in your mitochondria, which reduce their efficiency. If your mitochondria have too many radical oxides, or have them for two long, then your mitochondria will die. And if enough mitochondria in any given cell die, their host cells will also obviously die. This is what causes progressive supranuclear palsy, which is what this article is probably (incorrectly) referring to as Parkinson's. But because the metabolic needs of cancer cells are higher than the metabolic needs of non-cancer cells, there may be a certain dose of these chemicals that is high enough to inhibit cancer but low enough that it doesn't cause palsy. Further, the way that cancer cells often develop resistance to chemotherapy drugs is by using ATP to pump out the drugs once they have entered the cells. These mitochondrial complex 1 inhibitors can prevent these protein pumps from working by making the mitochondria less efficient, and therefor effectively prevent cancer cells from developing certain types of resistance to chemotherapy drugs. Basically if you go through Google Scholar and read the research on pawpaws, rotenone, graviola, and Metformin, it's all more or less the same stuff. John Clifton's book Your Fourth Choice is also a fun book you can get on Amazon and read in an hour or two. It does a good job summarizing the academic research on annonaceous acetogenins. (I bought it because I collect books on North American Pawpaws, not because I was in the market for an experimental cancer treatment.)
- andy_ppp 3y agoWhat would happen that was bad if we banned this until we had more safety evidence?
- coldtea 3y agoSome companies would lose money. We can't allow that.
- kerkeslager 3y agoThis is Hacker News, so you should probably include a "/s" to indicate sarcasm, because otherwise you'll get a lot of people agreeing with you.
- objektif 3y agoI would say yes few would agree but fortunately HN is still not filled with late stage capitalist idiots.
- Forbo 3y agoPeople get buttmad and downvote you for pointing out manmade global extinction events and daily death tolls from pollution. HN isn't immune from these shitbags. This site has a lot more capitalists than environmentalists.
- p0pcult 3y agoif one includes the "/s" then they get a lot of people arguing that profit is why companies exist.
- _Algernon_ 3y agoThe whole point of sarcasm is that people misunderstand causing funny situations. If you are going to signal it with eg. /s you may as well just say what you mean.
- dwighttk 3y agoWhat is the difference between linked and strongly linked?
- hgsgm 3y agoHigher correlation
- anaisbetts 3y agoWidely used chemical *(that was generally phased out in the 70s) linked to Parkinson's. Still important, but you don't need to start searching product labels in 2023 for it.
- quickthrower2 3y agoWas it? Read about its use in industry in 90s including a story about someone who got brain damaged by it.
- gabaix 3y agoSome of the most populated zones of the Bay Area are built on top of superfund sites, which have high concentration of TCE underground. https://www.epa.gov/superfund-redevelopment/superfund-sites-reuse-california https://www.epa.gov/superfund-redevelopment/superfund-sites-...
- bilbo0s 3y agoWell one problem is that "Some of the most populated zones of" everywhere are superfund sites. Another, I learned long ago in the real estate business, is that superfund sites are just the sites they've taken the trouble to bother "cleaning up". As the article alludes to, it's not the documented TCE sites we need to worry about, it's the undocumented TCE sites that will likely get the average person. This same rule applies to real estate development. One of the dirty secrets of development is that we really have just poisoned a lot of our environment. Now you can work around that in real estate dev because there are creative ways to interpret disclosure regulations. But Mother Nature doesn't care about such tricks. She has a set of, (in this case chemical), rules and if they're broken, she'll happily punish you without a second thought. I'm not sure how we solve the issue of toxins in our environment? It gets complex not only because of the competing interests, but also because research like this will continue to come out, and something we didn't think was a problem, will turn out to have been a problem. So you're in a situation where you know a lot. You even learn more everyday. But you don't know what you don't know.
- 3y ago
- hgsgm 3y agoTCE has been banned for human consumption for decades, as it is a known poison. Percentage change increase in a certain disease isn't interesting except as a rule-lawyering way to force polluters to pay for blatantly obvious pollution. This study is like saying subdermal exposure to lead bullets increasea chance of premature death. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichloroethylene https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichloroethylene
- marvel_boy 3y ago"But that “really means nothing for what’s already in the environment,” De Miranda says. Mitigating against exposure is tricky, she adds, because, unlike with pesticides, underground TCE locations aren’t always documented." Really disturbing.
- treeman79 3y agoStarted gabapentin, couple weeks later I had Parkinson’s Took awhile to clear up. Had a few rounds of this before I figured out that gabapentin induced Parkinson’s was a thing. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31633228/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31633228/
- titzer 3y agoDid you mean Parkinsonism, because that is an umbrella term for symptoms, not necessarily the disease. It's an important distinction, because Parkinson's is degenerative. https://www.parkinson.org/library/fact-sheets/parkinsonism https://www.parkinson.org/library/fact-sheets/parkinsonism
- nickdothutton 3y agoIANAC (I am not a chemist, and certainly not an organic chemist <shudder>) but I know that contamination by former dry cleaning sites (almost always near built up areas, in small parades of shops, often near schools, gardens, etc) is a very serious problem. In the past, such businesses frequently dumped waste into drains, soak-always, pits, or in fact anywhere other than paying to have it treated properly. Probably the only other thing I’m aware of that you might possibly encounter is the site of a former leather tannery, although these were not generally sited near houses due to the overpowering smell and obvious unsightlyness.
- masfuerte 3y agoIn the UK the soil around old petrol stations is usually highly contaminated and they are often found near houses.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ekianjo 3y ago70% higher risk is meaningless if you don't give the absolute risk. Common issue with this kind of reporting... EDIT: my bad, they did talk about the absolute risk later on. Should have been the first thing they mention, though, to avoid looking sensationalist. > The researchers calculated the rate of Parkinson’s disease in the veterans and compared it with the rate in more than 72,000 veterans who lived at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, a similar training ground in California where there were not high levels of TCE. By 2021, 279 of the Camp Lejeune veterans, or 0.33%, had developed Parkinson’s versus 151 of those at Camp Pendleton, or 0.21%.
- VWWHFSfQ 3y ago> Should have been the first thing they mention, though, to avoid looking sensationalist. There isn't a whole lot they can do if you don't actually read the article. I always try to read the article before I pass judgement on whether it's sensationalized or not.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- q1w2 3y agoIs that the only data sets they looked at? Comparing only two locations means that there could be any number of site differences that account for the difference in the rate of Parkinson’s disease, other than the studied chemical.
- rippercushions 3y agoPendleton seems to be a reasonable control, since the reported prevalence of 0.21% in patients under 60 matches other large data sets like the UK (0.25%). https://www.parkinsons.org.uk/sites/default/files/2018-01/Prevalence%20%20Incidence%20Report%20Latest_Public_2.pdf https://www.parkinsons.org.uk/sites/default/files/2018-01/Pr...
- q1w2 3y ago
- horeszko 3y ago>"But in the 20th century, TCE was used for many purposes, including making decaffeinated coffee" ... This is exactly the reason I never touched decaf coffee until I found Swiss water process (SWP) decaf. It never made sense to me to use hydrocarbon solvents in a food application
- paulrouget 3y agoI'm very curious about SWP. How does it taste compared to good light roasted single origins?
- noah_buddy 3y agoBased on some light reading just now: - SWP is a means of treating green coffee beans pre-roast. They can be roasted any which way afterwards. - Any type of bean can be treated this way. - The process is pretty specific in targeting just caffeine. In removing caffeine though, the total dissolved solubles in the end coffee will be lower for the same amount of beans. Probably a lessor body unless you use more. Interested to hear from someone who has tried it.
- rripken 3y agoI roast my own coffee beans. I usually get decaf SWP beans from Sweet Marias. https://www.sweetmarias.com/green-coffee/decaf.html https://www.sweetmarias.com/green-coffee/decaf.html The decaf SWP beans start out a different color of green bordering on tan compared to the light green of regular "green" coffee beans. Its not just the starting color, they roast differently too. Coffee beans crack during roasting - there is a first crack and then if you want it dark there is a second crack. The sound is usually pronounced. With the SWP beans the crack sound is more of a poof. Apparently SWP changes the structure of the beans, possibly introducing cracks or holes. The roasted beans seem drier and duller brown in color, less mahogany, less shiny. Its hard to know what the flavor impact of SWP was b/c I haven't tried the same beans before they were made decaf. It could just be my own prejudice or lack of skill in roasting but I would say on average the decaf coffee turns out 5-10% worse in quality.
- 3y ago
- ur-whale 3y agoGod forbid they would use the actual name of the chemical in the title. Journalists and their tricks are so tiresome.
- vrglvrglvrgl 3y ago[dead]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dcahill-ieee 3y agoI had read of a bacterial cause only recently. https://yle.fi/a/74-20030498 https://yle.fi/a/74-20030498
- dcahill-ieee 3y agoI had read of a bacterial cause only just recently https://yle.fi/a/74-20030498 https://yle.fi/a/74-20030498
- broguinn 3y agoI thought of this exactly. Is the Desulfovibrio bacterium's presence correlative with TCE exposure?
- rdl 3y agoThis is to some degree reassuring; as the chemical was phased out in the 1970s, maybe it means Parkinson's rates among people who are middle aged or younger today, and thus much less likely to have been exposed, will be lower than boomer+ rates.
- Alex3917 3y agoThese kind of Mitochondrial Complex 1 inhibitor induced Parkinson's are like 1% of cases. Granted these cases are probably highly underdiagnosed, but even if they really make up 10% of cases that probably doesn't change your overall risk that much. C.f.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9496895/#:~:text=Progressive%20supranuclear%20palsy%20(PSP)%20is%20a%20rare%20neurodegenerative%20movement%20disorder,increase%20with%20age%20%5B5%5D https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9496895/#:~:tex.... Alternatively, the idea that you can get actual Parkinson's (not PSP) from mitochondrial complex 1 inhibitors might be new and noteworthy on its own, because I'm not aware of other research showing this.
- stevenwoo 3y agoIt was phased out of wider non industrial uses like anesthesia(!) and decaffeinating coffee. It is still used as degreaser.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dontwearitout 3y ago"Pesticides such as paraquat and rotenone that have been associated with Parkinson’s disease also leave that pathological signature in rodents." - oh good, it looks like these are still widely in use.
- DrBazza 3y agoIt's been known for quite some time that trichloroethylene is linked to Parkinsons. In fact the doctor that assessed my father a few years ago asked him "what was your job?", "engineer," "you used degreaser didn't you? Did you know that .... ".
- faxmeyourcode 3y agoThis title is click bait. You could easily just include the name of the "widely used chemical" in the title.
- cwbrandsma 3y agoSure, it is trichloroethylene, but that would lose 99% of the audience as soon as they see a word that they can't pronounce. Widely used is accurate, it is everywhere.
- permo-w 3y ago“TCE - a widely used chemical - found to …” would do the job
- godshatter 3y agoThey'll see it right away once they get into the article, and will presumably nope out of there anyway. So why not put it in the headline? Oh, yeah, advertising. Thus, clickbait.
- lo_zamoyski 3y agoAlso, infertility[0]. [0] https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/article/82/2/590/1656962 https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/article/82/2/590/1656962
- s3p 3y agoCan you put the chemical name in your title?
- zwieback 3y agoWhen I was an intern in the 80s TCE was very popular as a degreaser. We were supposed to wear gloves when dipping our hands in there but often didn't.
- leejo 3y agoAny chemists here know if use of TCE has been phased out in school and graduate labs? When I was doing my degree I recall benzene was out in favour of toluene - which adds a methyl group to the ring, massively reducing toxicity. I'm pretty sure we used TCE however, its distinct smell still lives in my memory, and the fact if you got any on your fingers you could taste/smell it within seconds. Butanoic acid was the other one you didn't want to get on your fingers. All this was 25 years ago, I assume things have changed since then. I'm surprised I remember any of this.
- ta988 3y agoIt is deep in your brain now.
- jl2718 3y agoSmells like fodder for a lawsuit that benefits nobody but lawyers and bureaucrats. Frankly, there’s nobody in the system who has any incentive to defend the taxpayers against these things. Imagine what it would be like if they could sue any organization for any disease prevalence that popped hot on a t-test for any period of time. And they had access to everybody’s medical records to do that. And the organization doesn’t even have to pay. It’s a nonprofit, and the people that have to pay are the original donors, again. But these weren’t willing donors; they were forced to ‘donate’ by people with guns. Oh, and they were also forced to pay for the study that is now forcing them to pay again for the result and of course more studies. Torts against the government are a funny thing. It requires anti-government attitude to suggest that the government is incompetent, harmful, or criminal, but the solution is always more programs, more taxes, more laws, more bureaucracy. Oh and the ‘victims’? They will sign on expecting a huge payout, claim all kinds of problems, and end up with $0 and a weekly appointment with a VA occupational therapist. If they happen to have a problem that can actually be solved, too bad, no funding.
- broguinn 3y agoFilter your drinking water. From the Minnesota Dept. of Health: "Activated carbon filtration can remove TCE from drinking water effectively."[1] [1] https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/hazardous/docs/tcedrinkingwater.pdf https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/hazar...
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoAh, yes. Good ol' trichlor. Here's my experience with it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34887615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34887615
- airstrike 3y agoMichael J Fox in his wikipedia said > I used to go fishing in a river near paper mills and eat the salmon I caught; I've been to a lot of farms; I smoked a lot of pot in high school when the government was poisoning the crops. But you can drive yourself crazy trying to figure it out There's TCE in paper mill wastewater...
- jxramos 3y agoIsn't this the same stuff found in Mountain View by Google? Ah yah it is. https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=second.Cleanup&id=0904966#bkground https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fus... So is this chemical very stable and folks just dumped it into pits or something and it seeped into the groundwater? How did it get deep into the earth like that without being degraded or reacting with other stuff down there etc?
- aurizon 3y agoThere was a spate of recreational sniffing of trichlorethylene when it was a common industrial solvent -later it was banned, but persists in use under well controlled industrial uses - removing caffeine was one, there were many other?. A meta data study might show an 'echo' as people age due to later effects. https://www.google.com/search?q=sniffing+trichloroethylene&rlz=1C1CHBF_enCA924CA924&oq=sniffing+trichloroethylene&aqs=chrome..69i57.5303j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=sniffing+trichloroethylene&r...
- buildsjets 3y agoMy father worked as a mechanic as a teen in the early 1960s. He tells stories of loading air hoses up with trike and hosing the other mechanics down with it. 78 years old and no neurological issues so far. But he is one of those people who seems to completely ignore his physical condition and yet has minimal health issues despite his obesity. Mom has had a daily 6AM workout routine for decades, is at a stable healthy weight, and has no end of health issues.
- heywhatupboys 3y agosample size of two,
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JadeNB 3y agoI know it's the fault of the journal, but I thought we edited here to remove clickbait. Can we put at least the name of the chemical (trichloroethylene) in the title?
- roland_nilsson 3y agoJust a reminder that "70% higher risk" is a relative value describing the _fractional_ increase in risk. In absolute terms, the probability of developing Parkinson's (prevalence) was 0.33% in group exposed to TCE and 0.21% in the non-exposed group. So you might also say TCE increases the risk of Parkinson by 0.12 percentage points.
- russellbeattie 3y agoWhenever I see articles like this, I think of Piled Higher and Deeper's "Science News Cycle" cartoon. https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive_print.php?comicid=1174 https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive_print.php?comicid=1174
- desro 3y agoTo save a click: it's trichloroethylene (TCE)
- kragen 3y agoperhaps the headline here should say 'trichloroethylene'