Dear Health Conscious Reader,
When you think “organic,” you probably have a picture in your head of produce – organically grown fruits and vegetables.
But I want you to know about organic pesticides because of the growing evidence that chemical pesticides are linked to Parkinson’s disease.
In a study published by the journal Archives of Neurology, researchers were looking at people’s occupations, and how likely they were to get Parkinson’s disease.
What they found shocked them.
There was almost no increased risk for Parkinson’s regardless of what kind of work people did. But they did find that anyone who used at least one of eight different kinds of pesticides was more than twice as likely to get Parkinson’s.
And if you used the insecticide permethrin, you were three times more likely to develop the disease.1
Permethrin is a common insect killer widely sold for use on clothing. It’s also put in a pharmaceutical cream meant to be rubbed on the skin to kill mites.
Another study by the University of California at Berkeley found that people exposed to maneb, a common pesticide used in gardens, were 75 percent likelier to develop Parkinson’s.2
Then there are the findings of the huge Agricultural Health Study.
Have you heard about it? They closely follow about 90,000 licensed pesticide applicators and their spouses, and monitor them for illnesses.
Researchers published results showing that people who used commercial herbicides/pesticides like rotenone or paraquat developed Parkinson’s disease 2.5 times more often than non-users.3
These pesticides damage your cells. Rotenone, for example, impairs the ability of your mitochondria to make energy. And paraquat increases oxygen-induced damage to cells.
Some of the cells hardest hit by these pesticides are in an area of the brain that is also damaged by Parkinson’s.
If you’d like to avoid this kind of damage from pesticides and keep your brain working just as well as it does right now, here’s what I recommend:
- Stay away from products that claim to be “eco-friendly” or “natural,” when they clearly are not.
For example, avoid synthetic pyrethroids. They’re similar to pyrethrins, which are natural insect-killing extracts from the flower chrysanthemum. But pyrethroids are created in a lab. Permethrin, which I mentioned earlier, is one of them.
- Also, stay away from “geraniol.” It’s billed as natural because it’s made from roses, lemons and geraniums, but it’s been banned in Europe because of its toxicity to humans.
Here’s what to use instead:
- In my garden, I use neem oil to keep out pests. This extract from the fruit of the neem tree has been used for pest control in parts of Asia and India for over 2,500 years. It’s completely non-toxic. When the Environmental Protection Agency went to test neem for toxicity, it found zero reactions, even at the highest exposure.
In fact, you can use any part of the tree for pest control – the twigs, the leaves or the berries. The tree will grow in Florida. In other places and colder climates, I’ve seen it grown indoors in pots. Even sitting in a pot, it’ll serve to keep the bugs out. You can take a couple leaves and put them in your cabinets to keep cockroaches out. Or you can fray up the ends of the stems (so that the twigs are like brushes) and leave those around to work, too.
- I also get rid of the critters that try to crawl into my house with a pesticide that uses diatomaceous earth. It causes the pests to wither up and die.
- For a bug spray that’s good for spot use if I do see bugs in the house, I like to use a mint and herbal oil spray. It kills bugs within a few minutes and even smells pleasant, unlike those chemical sprays.
- For hard-to-kill bugs, look for pesticides with natural pyrethrins, which are made from chrysanthemums. They act fast, aren’t toxic to pets and degrade within a day.
- There are also bug baits made with boric acid, from the mineral boron. These aren’t toxic to people or pets either, and are great for getting rid of ants.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
[1] Tanner, Caroline M., MD, PhD, et al, “Occupation and Risk of Parkinsonism,” Arch. Neurol. 2009;66(9):1106-1113
[2] Costello, Sadie, et al, “Parkinson’s Disease and Residential Exposure to Maneb…” Am. J. Epidemiol. April 15, 2009; 169(8): 919–926
[3] Tanner, Caroline M., MD, PhD, et al, “Rotenone, Paraquat and Parkinson’s Disease,” Environ. Health Perspec, Jan. 2011