Was just reading that farmers have some of the highest rates of Parkinsons in the country and they're discovering a link to the very toxic herbicide Paraquat. Paraquat has been banned in most countries, including China where most of it is manufactured.

Parkinsons is a terrible disease. My dad passed away from it. He never used paraquat, but did work in the shipyards and mills where a lot of other toxic chemicals were used without proper protection for workers.

Dad would have been 115 yesterday, his birthday. He died just shy of his 87th.

O'Yeah, I bet it is just as safe as the rest of this crap the farmers are feeding everyone.

Most of the danger of Paraquat is for those that apply it or live next to where it's applied. When I was in ECUADOR I saw a family using an empty Paraquat container to hold their drinking water! They figured it was safe since they rinsed it out real good.

There have been in previous years 5 different studies on the use of Paraquat and its relationship to Parkison's.

All showed a definite YES.

But I believe it's still legal to use in the US.

Back in the 70's it was all over the news that the government was spraying paraquat on marijauna fields in Mexico. Warning people not to smoke it. Wonder what smoking it did to folks?

About 10 years ago, something killed off ALL of the muskrats in the El Centro valley in California. This is valley has probably the most intense industrial ag in North America.
At any hour of any day in the year, the almost overpowering stench of ag chemicals can be smelled in the air. This cannot be good.

Chemicals are overused in the USA, farming practices are pathetic, now they are finding glyphosate (round up) I valleys that have never been sprayed it's being picked up and rained. O I forgot you spray it and it's gone. Okay

yep. remember that well.

I had a movement disorders doctor tell me one time to be careful with well water in general because of herbicides (this was before these specific links) and we started filtering because of that

Yep, pretty sad when we have to be concerned about the water we draw from our wells.

Well I recall a time when all the talk here was ( Atrazien) spelling??? in ground water. Even know the one farm I hunted and trapped for 40 some years has a DNR test well on it. Farmer that lived there was second generation old school and didn't believe in using chemicals. His son inlaw worked for the DNR so suggested his farm for the test well. That way they would know if it was in the water table not from his land.
I'm sure there are plenty old timers here been into all kinds of stuff when we were younger. Remember the old line from 1970s.
Solutions polution is delusion.
Spread it thin enough no big deal.
Do know a guy younger than me that was diagnosed with Parkinson couple years ago now.
No idea why

Mac

"The solution to pollution is dilution."

I still believe atrazine is harmful.

Parkinsons is a nasty progressive disease that is on the rise. Really the only possible explanation is an increase in environmental contamination.

Older study but paraquat exposure in environment (farming) and well watee both linked to Parkinson disease. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2799466/#t3-ehp-117-1912

Thinking back, I was at a national conference years ago. Got to comparing notes with some field staff who sampled wells as part of their job. As I recall, one guy told me farm wells in Missouri were an average 12 ft deep. Going deeper was almost unheard of. Guess those old folks never got old enough to figure their medical problems could have been in their water.

That was the Feds choice for pot grow eradication years ago.

I used to believe rain water was pure and safe to drink. But apparently even rain water has plastic and those chemicals associated with plastic in it. That kind of makes drinking out of a unapproved plastic container seem mute when the rain water I'm putting in it is already polluted with plastic, lol.

I went to a meeting in the early 60's with my dad when they were promoting atrazine. The guy doing the presentation said it was no more harmful than table salt. Well, maybe not but now we know if you don't want your boy frogs turning into girl frogs, then best keep them out of heavily polluted atrazine water. I guess that would make the frogs happy or at least gay !

Would reverse osmosis remove the chemicals and plastics from affected water? Wondering if a modern solution could help ease the problem.

Got me to thinking about the movie "Water World" where the guy way purifying his own pee to drink, lol.

I know after I first read about the plastics a couple years ago I added a charcoal filter after my first filter. I think that works but at this point, I'm pretty sure old age is my worst enemy !