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Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

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Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#181

Post by rlt »

anaisbetts wrote: post #24

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.

> But in the 20th century, TCE was used for many purposes, including making decaffeinated coffee, dry cleaning, carpet cleaning, and as an inhaled surgical anesthetic for children and women in labor.

The things we did with (now known) hazardous chemicals in the 20th century are really disturbing. My question is are there now enough safeguards in place that we're unlikely to be repeating the same mistakes?

My guess is no, certainly not with every product imported from other countries. We joke about sketchy smelling products from China, and you occasionally hear about imports being recalled or blocked. How much of it are we missing, both known and unknown chemicals?

On the other hand, it's also easy for people disposed to anxiety to go down a rabbit hole where the only conclusion is you should go live off the land in the middle of nowhere...

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#182

Post by mouse_ »

sidpatil wrote: post #169
horeszko wrote: post #73

>"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

> It never made sense to me to use hydrocarbon solvents in a food application I get your point, but isn't this kind of a broad statement? After all, ethanol is a hydrocarbon solvent, and it's been used in food applications for a long time.

Ethanol is also a horrible toxin, it just happens to be common enough in nature that our bodies, and animal bodies as well, have had hundreds of thousands of years to evolve some mitigations against.

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#183

Post by birdyrooster »

walleeee wrote: post #135
bilbo0s wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well 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 a…

I can't help but think we've gone too far in limiting liability Doing so may be an effective way to catalyze invention and economic activity but ignoring externalities becomes existentially risky as our capacities develop If we prefer human arbitration to nature's blind and brutal judgment, we had better put toothy disincentives in place Is it possible that occasionally punishing an honest mistake or absence of foret…

Really well said, gets to the heart of the issue truly.

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#184

Post by logicchains »

rlt wrote: post #181
anaisbetts wrote: post #24

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.

> But in the 20th century, TCE was used for many purposes, including making decaffeinated coffee, dry cleaning, carpet cleaning, and as an inhaled surgical anesthetic for children and women in labor. The things we did with (now known) hazardous chemicals in the 20th century are really disturbing. My question is are there now enough safeguards in place that we're unlikely to be repeating the same mistakes? My guess is…

>My question is are there now enough safeguards in place that we're unlikely to be repeating the same mistakes?

Nope. For instance some of the chemicals in sun screen never had to pass rigorous safety testing because it was assumed they couldn't enter the blood, but in fact that's not the case, and already at least one is known to have negative effects on reproductive health: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2733085 . Who knows what other chemicals are floating about in various cosmetics entering the bloodstream through the skin without ever being safety tested for that.

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#186

Post by hallway_monitor »

rlt wrote: post #181
anaisbetts wrote: post #24

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.

> But in the 20th century, TCE was used for many purposes, including making decaffeinated coffee, dry cleaning, carpet cleaning, and as an inhaled surgical anesthetic for children and women in labor. The things we did with (now known) hazardous chemicals in the 20th century are really disturbing. My question is are there now enough safeguards in place that we're unlikely to be repeating the same mistakes? My guess is…

For chemicals that cause illnesses that take decades to show up, it's my guess that we will never find all of them, and there are likely a lot of them out there. It's a hard problem. Maybe it can be helped by using modelling techniques to extrapolate effects over time.

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#187

Post by dist-epoch »

Alex3917 wrote: post #131
dist-epoch wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone should be taking mitochondrial complex 1 inhibitors These processes have billions of years of evolution behind them and are highly conserved. People shouldn't mess with them until there are huge studies, and not in the context of cancer therapy. Just because something helps with cancer, like mitochondrial complex 1 inhibitors (or radiation) doesn't mean we should all do it. Remember all the talk about how…

> Remember all the talk about how we should all eat lots of anti-oxidants to prevent cancer? It turns out it's more complicated than that, and an anti-oxidant rich diet can actually increase cancer risk. Which is probably because Mitochondrial Complex 1 inhibitors work by producing radical oxides in the mitochondria. I definitely agree with you that it's inherently very risky to mess around with them, but I also don'…

The explanation I saw was that radical oxides do a bit of damage to the cell and this triggers alarms which cause the cell to initiate repair mechanisms or kill itself. By taking anti-oxidants you are messing around with this alarm system, and basically make the cell live longer than expected, which increases cancer risk.

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#188

Post by leejo »

Any 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.

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#189

Post by photochemsyn »

anaisbetts wrote: post #24

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.

TCE is widely used in industry (and was introduced as a replacement for more toxic and persistent solvents like chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, etc.). Such non-polar solvents remain critically important for a wide variety of manufacturing processes, e.g.

> "TCE the solvent ENTEK uses is essential to ENTEK's separator manufacturing process TCE has a unique combination of chemical properties that , together , facilitate the controlled removal of process oil while allowing ENTEK to efficiently recover and recycle previously used TCE for reuse in both the lead- acid and lithium separator production processes in a manner that minimizes worker exposure while resulting in a product with the characteristics demanded by the battery customers . TCE possesses the following properties critical to ENTEK's use and reuse" (ENTEK TCE rulemaking report to EPA, July 14 2021)

The fundamental issue (that led to widespread contamination in the past) is that capturing and recycling TCE after use is fairly expensive, and since it was cheaper to buy new TCE, manufacturers would just dump their dirty used TCE, creating superfund sites etc.

There are some approaches to replacing organic solvents entirely (supercritical CO2 for example) but they're often quite expensive.

Re: Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease

#190

Post by permo-w »

cwbrandsma wrote: post #175
faxmeyourcode wrote: post #172

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.

“TCE - a widely used chemical - found to …” would do the job
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