Widely 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.
from the article: > TCE is highly persistent in soil and groundwater; inhalation through vapor from these hidden sources is likely the prime route of exposure today. However, it’s detectable in many foods, in up to one-third of U.S. drinking water, and in breast milk, blood, and urine. the groundwater route still seems pretty troubling
It’s also denser than water and somewhat hydrophobic so if I understand correctly it tends to settle at the bottom of aquifers.
>"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
You can also look for Mountain Water Process (MWP), which is basically the exact same process, but from coffee sourced in South America.
>"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
I'm very curious about SWP. How does it taste compared to good light roasted single origins?
I am very sensitive to caffeine and recently switched to decaf only after drinking coffee daily for 20+ years. I drink mainly Mountain Water Processed coffee, which is the same thing but from coffee sourced in South America. It is roasted by a local roaster in Minneapolis. I honestly can't tell the difference between the decaf and regular (except for the lack of caffeine).
Also, SWP or MWP coffee removes nearly all caffeine unlike the more heavily processed versions.
This title is click bait. You could easily just include the name of the "widely used chemical" in the title.
Sure, 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.
> 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 compl…
As I understand, Parkinson's does not kill you. NHS UK says: > Also: > Ref: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/parkinsons-disease/
This is often said, but I don't think it should paint too rosy a picture, it's still a massively debilitating disease. My father (diagnosed just after 50) lived nearly 30 years with it (died 78 - I guess that's normal life expectancy, but the last decade of his life he had a pretty bad quality of life). He is unusual in that his death cert just says Parkinson's Disease as cause of death, and I wondered at the time whether the consultant was making a point that PD can be the thing that kills you after all. He really didn't have much else wrong with him except that, once the drugs stopped working he couldn't swallow, talk or walk - he lost a ton of weight and the dementia side of it (which is far less discussed) meant any kind of communication was basically impossible. Not sure what my point is - but "you don't die of it" is a bit of an oversimplification.
Some 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-...
This map (from 2015) shows sites with the most TCE groundwater contamination. Bay Area is actually quite clean. LA is completely fucked though https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/2018-tce/
Thanks for this. Kind of happy my state of GA has none!
This 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.
if one includes the "/s" then they get a lot of people arguing that profit is why companies exist.
The 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.
> 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 compl…
As I understand, Parkinson's does not kill you. NHS UK says: > Also: > Ref: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/parkinsons-disease/
The form of atypical Parkinson's caused by mitochondrial complex 1 inhibitors (progresessive supranuclear palsy) is not treatable, at least with normal Parkinson's drugs. My wild speculative guess is that many of the soldiers in this article have a mild-enough form of PSP that it's being misdiagnosed as Parkinson's.