Toxic Pollutants Cause Brain Diseases

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<http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1283588,00.html>

>

> Pollutants cause huge rise in brain diseases

>

> Scientists alarmed as number of cases triples in 20

> years

>

> Juliette Jowit, environment editor

> Sunday August 15, 2004

> The Observer

>

> The numbers of sufferers of brain diseases,

> including Alzheimer's,

> Parkinson's and motor neurone disease, have soared

> across the West in

> less than 20 years, scientists have discovered.

>

> The alarming rise, which includes figures showing

> rates of dementia have

> trebled in men, has been linked to rises in levels

> of pesticides,

> industrial effluents, domestic waste, car exhausts

> and other pollutants,

> says a report in the journal Public Health.

>

> In the late 1970s, there were around 3,000 deaths a

> year from these

> conditions in England and Wales. By the late 1990s,

> there were 10,000.

>

> 'This has really scared me,' said Professor Colin

> Pritchard of

> Bournemouth University, one of the report's authors.

> 'These are nasty

> diseases: people are getting more of them and they

> are starting earlier.

> We have to look at the environment and ask ourselves

> what we are doing.'

>

> The report, which Pritchard wrote with colleagues at

> Southampton

> University, covered the incidence of brain diseases

> in the UK, US,

> Japan, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy,

> Netherlands and Spain

> in 1979-1997. The researchers then compared death

> rates for the first

> three years of the study period with the last three,

> and discovered that

> dementias - mainly Alzheimer's, but including other

> forms of senility -

> more than trebled for men and rose nearly 90 per

> cent among women in

> England and Wales. All the other countries were also

> affected.

>

> For other ailments, such as Parkinson's and motor

> neurone disease, the

> group found there had been a rise of about 50 per

> cent in cases for both

> men and women in every country except Japan. The

> increases in

> neurological deaths mirror rises in cancer rates in

> the West.

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> The team stresses that its figures take account of

> the fact that people

> are living longer and it has also made allowances

> for the fact that

> diagnoses of such ailments have improved. It is

> comparing death rates,

> not numbers of cases, it says.

>

> As to the cause of this disturbing rise, Pritchard

> said genetic causes

> could be ruled out because any changes to DNA would

> take hundreds of

> years to take effect. 'It must be the environment,'

> he said.

>

> The causes were most likely to be chemicals, from

> car pollution to

> pesticides on crops and industrial chemicals used in

> almost every aspect

> of modern life, from processed food to packaging,

> from electrical goods

> to sofa covers, Pritchard said.

>

> Food is also a major concern because it provides the

> most obvious

> explanation for the exclusion of Japan from many of

> these trends. Only

> when Japanese people move to the other countries do

> their disease rates

> increase.

>

> 'There's no one single cause ... and most of the

> time we have no studies

> on all the multiple interactions of the combinations

> on the environment.

> I can only say there have been these major changes

> [in deaths]: it is

> suggested it's multiple pollution.'

>

> Pritchard's paper has been published amid growing

> fears about the

> chemical build-up in the environment. A number of

> studies have pointed

> to serious problems. TBT is being banned from marine

> paints after it was

> blamed for masculinising female molluscs, causing a

> dramatic decline in

> numbers. A US report linked neurological disorders

> to pesticides. And

> testing by WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund)

> found non-natural

> substances such as flame retardants in every person

> who took part.

>

> WWF has named chemical pollution as one of the two

> great environmental

> threats to the world, alongside global warming, and

> is particularly

> worried about 'persistent and accumulative'

> industrial chemicals and

> endocrine - hormone distorting - substances linked

> to changes in gender

> and behaviour among animals and even children.

>

> 'We've started seeing changes in fertility rates,

> the immune system,

> neurological changes [and] impacts on behaviour,'

> said Matthew

> Wilkinson, the charity's toxics programme leader.

>

> Pesticides and pharmaceutical chemicals must now

> undergo rigorous

> testing before they can be used. But there are an

> estimated 80,000

> industrial chemicals and the 'vast majority' do not

> need safety

> regulation or testing, said Wilkinson.

>

> However, the chemical industry strongly rejects what

> it claims are often

> unproven fears. Just because chemicals are present

> does not mean they

> are at dangerous levels.

>

> But critics are not reassured. 'It is true that just

> because we find a

> chemical does not mean it is dangerous,' said

> Wilkinson. 'But it is

> equally true that for the vast majority of chemicals

> we have so little

> safety data that the regulatory authorities have no

> idea what a safe

> level is.'

>

> The Royal Society of Chemistry also said quantities

> of pesticides were

> declining. 'Improvements in analytical chemistry

> mean that lower and

> lower levels of pesticides can be detected,' said

> Brian Emsley, the

> society's spokesman. '[but] because you can detect

> something doesn't

> necessarily mean it is dangerous.'

>