Login
Common Pesticide May More Than Double Parkinson’s Disease Risk
A new study from UCLA Health reports that long-term residential exposure to the pesticide chlorpyrifos is linked to a substantially higher risk of Parkinson’s disease. People living in areas with ongoing exposure had more than a 2.5 times greater likelihood of developing the condition.
The research, published in the journal Molecular Neurodegeneration, combines large-scale human data with laboratory experiments that show how the pesticide harms dopamine-producing brain cells. Together, the results provide biological evidence supporting a connection between chlorpyrifos exposure and Parkinson’s disease.
Nearly one million people in the United States are living with Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurological disorder that causes tremors, muscle stiffness, and increasing difficulty with movement. Although genetics contributes to some cases, scientists now recognize environmental exposures as important risk factors as well. Pesticides have drawn particular attention in recent years.
Analysis Finds ‘Hot Spots’ for Glyphosate and Cancer in Iowa and Other Midwest States
A new analysis links high use of the weed killer glyphosate to elevated rates of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), particularly in the Midwest, reinforcing years of research linking cancer to the weed killer made popular by Monsanto. The analysis by Food & Water Watch (FWW), a nonprofit public health advocacy group, looked at counties that spray the highest amounts of glyphosate herbicides in the country, focusing on those in the top 20% of glyphosate use on commodity crops.
The group then overlapped that data with NHL incidence rates. Among the findings, the group said 60% of counties that had high glyphosate use had NHL rates above the national average. The greatest overlap between glyphosate application and NHL was in the Midwest, a key US farming region.
A map of the hotspots shows clusters of NHL rates particularly high in many parts of Iowa, the nation’s top corn-growing state and among the top five states for growing soybeans. Both crops have both been genetically altered to tolerate being sprayed with glyphosate.
Microplastics Detected in Prostate Tumor Samples
Microplastics were detected in prostate tissue from nearly all patients undergoing prostate cancer surgery in a small proof-of-concept study presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium. Researchers also observed higher concentrations of microplastics in tumor tissue compared with benign tissue from the same prostate. In this exclusive MedPage Today video, Stacy Loeb, MD, of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City, discusses the early findings and what they may mean for future research on environmental exposures and prostate cancer.
Following is a transcript of her remarks:
We examined whether microplastics are found in prostate tissue from patients with prostate cancer undergoing prostate surgery. We looked at 10 patients and found microplastics in 9 of the 10 patients’ prostates. What was most interesting and surprising about the findings is that there were higher concentrations of microplastics in tumor tissue compared to benign tissue from the opposite side of the prostate.
Trump EPA Moves to Repeal Regulation of Cancer-Linked Chemical Ethylene Oxide
Many medical devices need to be sterile to be used safely. But sterilizing a pacemaker, catheter, or other device with steam or heat could damage its structural integrity. So medical device manufacturers turn to the chemical compound ethylene oxide, which is highly effective at killing microbes at low concentrations and allows companies to meet the Food and Drug Administration’s strict sterility standards. As a result, roughly half of all medical devices in the country are sterilized with ethylene oxide, or EtO, making it a linchpin of the medical device industry.
There’s just one problem: EtO is a toxic gas that has been linked to cancers of the breast and lymph nodes. Roughly 90 facilities across the country deploy the chemical for sterilization. These nondescript facilities often resemble warehouses and are located in residential neighborhoods and near schools.
In 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency discovered that dozens of these facilities presented an unacceptable cancer risk to surrounding communities. Two years later, the federal agency, led at the time by the Biden administration, announced new regulations to limit the amount of the chemical released into the air. The rule required sterilization facilities to install equipment to capture and burn ethylene oxide and was estimated to cut EtO emissions — and the resulting cancer risk to nearby communities — by more than 90 percent.
Lawsuit Challenges New EPA Air Pollution Standards That Discount Human Life and Weaken Clean Air Protections
A coalition of public health and environmental organizations filed a lawsuit today challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s final rule on soot- and smog-forming air pollution that excludes human health costs from its economic analysis. “This rule betrays the very mission EPA was created to carry out and puts the most vulnerable communities directly in harm’s way,” said Abi Vijayan, senior climate attorney for NRDC.
“Trump’s EPA is pretending it can erase the real human cost of pollution with zeros on a spreadsheet, but families will still pay the price through more asthma attacks, more emergency room visits, and more premature deaths if this rule is allowed to stand.”
The lawsuit, filed in the D.C. Circuit Monday by Sierra Club, American Lung Association, Clean Wisconsin, Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, Environmental Defense Fund, and NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) challenges a rule that adopts unlawfully weak pollution controls for nitrogen oxides from gas turbines.
The rule also embraces, for the first time, a sweeping new position that EPA will not calculate the public-health economic benefits of reducing fine particulate matter and ozone air pollution. The EPA counted what pollution controls would cost industry, but refused to account for what cleaner air would save in avoided early deaths, emergency room and hospital visits, asthma attacks, and other harms.
As EPA Weakens Air Pollution Regulations, Black Women Stand to Face the Greatest Health Risks
Rhonda Anderson has spent nearly three decades fighting for clean air and water in Detroit. As an environmental justice organizer with the Sierra Club, she led campaigns to raise awareness about lead poisoning of babies and children in the vicinity of steel mills and is part of a Clean Air Act lawsuit against the EES Coke Battery, a local industrial facility.
So watching the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) taking one step after another to weaken air pollution regulations over the last year has felt “really, pretty much devastating,” she said. “Just looking at my little world, we’ve worked so hard to get a lot of these things recognized,” Anderson said. Most of her work has been in southwest Detroit, which has over 150 industrial facilities and some of the worst air quality in Michigan. Just a year ago, “we had a fifth grader who passed from an asthma attack,” she said.
In addition to overturning dozens of regulations aimed at reducing air pollution to save lives, the EPA has also exempted over 100 industrial facilities, including the Coke Battery plant Anderson has been fighting, from more rigorous rules to reduce pollution, created under the Biden administration.
