TCE exposure may raise your risk for Parkinson's: Study

Two years of heavy exposure to TCE or trichloroethylene , a liquid chemical that lingers in the air, water and soil, may increase the risk of Parkinson’s disease by 70%.

TCE has been used for industrial and commercial purposes for nearly 100 years, and was used as a surgical anesthetic until it was banned in 1977. More recently it was used as a degreasing solvent. Today, it is primarily used to degrease industrial metal parts. This entails heating TCE in degreasing tanks to create a vapor that dissolves the grease, but it also releases the chemical into the atmosphere. Once TCE enters the soil or groundwater, it can persist for decades.

In the study, researchers led by UC San Francisco and the San Francisco VA Medical Center, compared Parkinson’s diagnoses in approximately 160,000 Navy and Marine veterans. Just over half came from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where TCE was used to degrease military equipment and water was contaminated; the remainder came from Camp Pendleton in California, where the water was not contaminated.

Researchers found that 430 veterans had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and that the Lejeune veterans’ risk was 70% higher than the Pendleton veterans. On average, service members of both camps were stationed there approximately two years from 1975 to 1985. Residence began at an average age of 20, and Parkinson’s diagnosis occurred at an average age of 54 at Lejeune and 53 at Pendleton, showing that the disease took decades to develop after TCE exposure.

Reference:

Samuel M. Goldman, et al,JOURNAL JAMA Neurology