Parkinson's From the Environment?

I've been meaning to link to this piece by Lauren Wolf in C&E News on the connections between Parkinson's disease and environmental exposure to mitochondrial toxins. (PDF version available here). Links between environmental toxins and disease are drawn all the time, of course, sometimes with very good reason, but often when there seems to be little evidence. In this case, though, since we have the incontrovertible example of MPTP to work from, things have to be taken seriously. Wolf's article is long, detailed, and covers a lot of ground. The conclusion seems to be that some people may well be genetically more susceptible to such exposures. A lot of people with Parkinson's have never really had much pesticide exposure, and a lot of people who've worked with pesticides never show any signs of Parkinson's. But there could well be a vulnerable population that bridges these two.
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: The Central Nervous System Source Type: blogs