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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

#321

Post by virtualwhys »

clort wrote: post #311
DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as an inhaled surgical anesthetic for children and women in labor To be fair though, the restricted audience for the administration of this particular chemical would seem to indicate considerations of safety have been applied, otherwise one would expect a more general pattern. One must suspect there are many more chemicals with similarly hard-to-test-for longterm effects in daily use, note especially the so-called 'f…

I had a couple of operations as a youngster, and from my memory (could be faulty) they would speak to you while you were still on the trolley then waft some gas in front of you as you needed to breathe in. Then, when you were sedated they would get on with the business. I guess they would be able to inject you with something a bit more serious without you squirming, and transfer you to the table etc..

Likewise, hernia operation as a small child.

I remember feeling like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich being folded in half, and then the lights went out.

Hopefully one-off cases don't significantly affect the chances of getting a serious neurological disorder later in life -- it seems we'll find out in the coming years...

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

#322

Post by BizarroLand »

logicchains wrote: post #184
rlt wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/ful…

Not to mention that many kinds of sunscreen have chemicals in them that kill Coral reefs. It's becoming fairly common for ocean tourist communities to pay attention to, but that won't really stop whatever washes down the rivers.

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

#324

Post by KMag »

virtualwhys wrote: post #321
clort wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a couple of operations as a youngster, and from my memory (could be faulty) they would speak to you while you were still on the trolley then waft some gas in front of you as you needed to breathe in. Then, when you were sedated they would get on with the business. I guess they would be able to inject you with something a bit more serious without you squirming, and transfer you to the table etc..

Likewise, hernia operation as a small child. I remember feeling like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich being folded in half, and then the lights went out. Hopefully one-off cases don't significantly affect the chances of getting a serious neurological disorder later in life -- it seems we'll find out in the coming years...

> Hopefully one-off cases don't significantly affect the chances of getting a serious neurological disorder later in life -- it seems we'll find out in the coming years...

My father and grandfather were anesthesiologists. We kind of adopted an older nurse anesthetist as a surrogate grandmother when I was a kid. She told us stories of back in the old days, sitting there with a stopwatch with one hand on the patient's wrist taking their pulse, and a dropper full of chloroform in the other hand, placing drops on a gauze mask over the patient's mouth when the pulse rate started going up. She always got significant amounts of second-hand anesthetic exposure.

She said it was pretty common after a long day of work to drive home quite high from all of the chloroform exposure. I presume TCE anesthesia was similar, and nurse anesthetists likely got at least 10,000 times the lifetime exposure that you got. Granted, there can be differences due to age of exposure, and often non-linearities of exposure. However, if the risks of a single surgery under TCE anesthesia were significant, I'm pretty sure someone would have noted absurd rates of parkinson's in nurse anesthetists.

Certainly, read up on the early signs of Parkinson's, and talk to your doctor if you think you might start showing symptoms, but don't get hypochondria over it.

Cyclopropane as an anesthetic on the other hand... particularly with electrocautery pens... I have no idea how they were ever allowed in the same operating room, at least not without some kind of fume hood around the patient's head pulling air rapidly out of the room using a non-arcing fan.

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

#325

Post by dekhn »

uoaei wrote: post #210
culi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/toxic-chemical-fou... > The Oakland Unified School district announced the temporary closure of the McClymonds to test for the chemical tricloroethylene (TCE), which was found in groundwater under the campus. > "This is West Oakland and so there is a history of environmental injustice, of racial injustice that happens in this community. So these are places where there are leak…

Cancer has a fairly high incident rate in the general public, so anecdotes about people getting cancer due to industrial solvents is often suspect. Most observations can be explained by a combination of base rates, and social determinants of health.

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

#326

Post by dekhn »

mulmen wrote: post #287
minsc_and_boo wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethanol is technically an alcohol hydrocarbon, if we're getting into the weeds on semantics.

What is an "alcohol hydrocarbon"? Alcohol isn't a hydrocarbon. As already pointed out a hydrocarbon is comprised entirely of hydrogen and carbon.

Alcohol hydrocarbons are hydrocarbons with an alcohol group attached (see the diagram at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxy_group) The simplest would be methanol, from methane. Any organic chemist would know what you meant, although it's not really correct terminology. IIRC the hydrocarbon would be called an 'alkyl group'.

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

#327

Post by kelnos »

gabaix wrote: post #41
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.

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-...

Curious, Treasure Island (in the San Francisco Bay between SF and Oakland) is absolutely a Superfund site, but isn't marked on that map. Oh huh, apparently it avoided getting classified as a Superfund site[0]. Really makes me think that designation isn't all that useful anymore.

[0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-Treasure-Is...

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

#328

Post by throwaway2037 »

brewdad wrote: post #294
sidpatil wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't want to deanonymize themselves.

Yes, but too often the vagueness is just silly. "I work for a major search engine (rhymes with Scroogle) and...blah" Just come out and say it at that point.

That is exactly my point. I guess I can feed these types of posts into ChatGPT 17 and it will tell me the name of the company, city, etc. Soon enough!

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

#329

Post by throwaway2037 »

exchemist wrote: post #176
throwaway2037 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

That is incredible. To live 27-28 years after diagnosis is a modern medical miracle. That said, I am highly sympathetic to the points that you made. Essentially, he became a vegetable: >

Did you ever discuss end-of-life options with him before the disease progressed so far? I have a close relative with PD. I am terrified of the last years, but no idea how to raise the issue of end-of-life options. My family's culture is pretty much "try to live forever" instead of "try to live well". Are there any Swiss/Belgians/Dutchies here with experience on planned end-of-life options? Those three countries are exceptionally liberal on that matter.

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

#330

Post by throwaway2037 »

krageon wrote: post #214
dcow wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but it’s not a lie to say it was phased out in the 70s. Your comment would be more substantial and useful if you made whatever nuance you’re trying to highlight clear.

If the poster you responded to is right, it is in fact a lie to say it was phased out in any meaningful manner. I don't see this comment as unhelpful - if the use just didn't stop, that's that. What is there to discuss? It was poison, it's still poison. it's in picrin [1], which is a spot cleaning solvent. You can buy that today. A paper from 2020 indicates that it is still used and not banned [2] [1] https://www.a-1…

Good point about spot cleaning. I didn't know that. Here is what Google told me about it:

    Trichloroethylene has been a long-standing chemical utilized in dry cleaning and spot removal processes, but its safety towards dry cleaners' health has been questioned in recent years. In 2012, California enacted a ban on using TCE or TCE-based products for dry cleaning.
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