Parkinson’s Disease is not inevitable. Parkinson’s Disease is rather preventable.
Ray Dorsey MD
Can we prevent Parkinson’s Disease in the future? Dr. Ray Dorsey, one of the co-authors of the book “Ending Parkinson’s Disease“, says that we can. On Sunday, August 23, Dr. Dorsey spoke to our Sunday Mornings with Twitchy Women group on Zoom. He said that the major premise of this important book is that Parkinson’s is a man-made disease, caused by exposure to chemicals, and it is preventable.
Parkinson’s was rarely seen before the Industrial Revolution began more than 200 years ago. Man-made chemicals and pollutants were spewed into the air from industry everywhere. In England, the air became so thick with noxious chemicals, it became know as the “London Fog.” It was at this time, in 1817 that Dr. James Parkinson wrote his groundbreaking paper on the “Shaking Palsy” after observing 6 men with tremors, a bent posture, an abnormal gait and a tendency to fall.
There are two main chemicals still in use today that contribute to a huge percentage of the people suffering with Parkinson’s. Paraquat and Trichloroethylene (TCE). Because of their continued use, the number of people with PD has doubled in the last 10 years and is expecting to double again in the next 20-25 years, reaching Pandemic proportions.
So here’s the irony in all of this: Great Britain, which banned Paraquat several years ago, still manufactures it to sell to, you got it, the United States, which continues to postpone a ban on this toxic chemical. In fact, paraquat is the most used herbicide in the US, more than doubling in use in the last 10 years. Looking at maps of PD incidence you will see that it is much higher in farming communities. Unfortunately, traces of paraquat show up in the milk we drink, the food we eat, and our ground water, making it impossible to avoid exposure.
The second toxic chemical used in the United States is the solvent Trichloroethylene. TCE, introduced in the 1920’s, has been used to clean the silicon chips in the Silicon Valley, circuit boards, flushing rocket engines, cleaning carpets and at the dry cleaners. Although the use of TCE has declined, it is still found in many common household products today.
Call to Action
To make his point that we can reduce worldwide exposure to Paraquat and TCE, Dr. Dorsey told the stories of ordinary people, not the doctors or scientists, who pushed to eradicate HIV, Polio and Breast Cancer. He emphasized that today, we can do the same for Parkinson’s.
Twitchy Women CAN help end Parkinson’s for Future Generations
How? By making our voices heard, NOW. Not tomorrow, not next week or next year. NOW. We Twitchy Women cannot wait for others to make it happen. We can join forces with PD Avengers and others to create a worldwide grass roots movement to ban the use of these chemicals everywhere.
The good news is that the EPA ( Environmental Protection Agency) must make a decision on the future of Paraquat use in the US by October 2022. That is just over a year away. The bad news is that if the EPA doesn’t ban Paraquat now, it has up to 15 more years to review it again.
So your mission is to contact EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler (wheeler.andrew@epa.gov) or call him at 202-564-4700, urging him to ban Paraquat in the US. Write to your congressperson asking him/her to do the same. We need to flood their emails and phones with our message. The more people they hear from, the stronger our voices become.
If you live in the U.S. write a letter to your congress person to support the bill that bans Paraquat.
If you live in another country that still allows the use of Paraquat and TCE, look for similar agencies to contact at home, and urge others to join you on your quest.
For more information about what you can do, go to https://endingpd.org/. You can sign up for their email list to get notified about upcoming live webcasts, and watch past webcasts: https://endingpd.org/live
Ready to end Parkinson’s disease? Sign the PACT to Prevent, Advocate, Care, and Treat Parkinson’s: https://endingpd.org/resources
We Are Fighters
We have been called PD Warriors, PD Avengers, PD Fighters and more. We are superheroes. Let’s show the world that we are all of these and that we can make a difference for our children and our children’s children by eradicating one of the major causes of Parkinson’s Disease today.
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