Parkinsons Study- Golf Course Proximity Correlation

[SkiSchoolPro]

Could chemicals used on golf courses negatively affect our health?

 

https://www.newsweek.com/parkinsons-disease-linked-golf-courses-new-study-2070602

 

Anecdotal, but a former superintendent at my dad's course has Parkinsons.

Edited May 12 by SkiSchoolPro

[smoky25]

Their hypothesis was pesticide contamination of groundwater in areas in close proximity to golf courses would lead to a higher incidence of PD.  Oddly, they never tested the water for the presence of pesticides.  A more direct and informative study would be to discover the incidence of PD among golf course superintendents.

[torbill]

Paraquat is an herbicide, not a pesticide.  Why would golf courses be using a lot of it?  After all it is a super good killer of turf in addition to weeds.  Maybe somebody who knows golf course turf management could comment.  I don’t even know if rotenone, the other chemical, is in common use anyplace anymore…

Rochester MN is in Olmsted County.  Most of the courses there that are near homes are in the city proper and likely on city water and not wells.  So it’s hard to understand the method of contamination of nearby homes if they suspect the water.  

 

Mayo Clinic is in Rochester.  It is enormous - 50K employees locally, and sees millions of patients yearly, some of whom tend to need continuous care and reside longer term there.  Does this skew the data?  Don’t know.  Mayo sees many, many Parkinson’s patients and it’s curious that the focus of attention may be on Olmsted County.

All in all this seems to me to not be a source of serious concern unless more is known.    

Edited May 13 by torbill

[SkiSchoolPro]

@smoky25, testing the actual ground water involved makes sense to me, but the frequency of tests could make it expensive. I'm not an expert, but assume that water quality & composition varies by time of year, amount of recent precipitation and numerous other factors.

 

@torbill, Agree that lots of things can skew data, but I'd certainly have some concern if I lived in an area with abnormally high Parkinsons rates. I think history has proved that we can’t always rely on businesses disclosing the dangers/risks of their products. Cigarettes, Aespestos, PFAS, Opiods and Plastics are a few that come to mind. Who should bear the cost of learning more? The chemical manufacturers, the golf courses, the local residents, the tax payers or someone else?

[PedronNiall]

Would like to read the actual study. The way certain things are phrased is odd or not fitting with research paper standards. Still, the bits that seem straightforward are hard to ignore.

 

Researchers said in the study: "Individuals getting their tap water from groundwater water service areas with a golf course had nearly doubled odds of PD compared with individuals getting tap water from groundwater water service areas without golf courses and 49% greater odds of PD compared with individuals getting drinking water from private wells."

 

That's certainly not comforting, but again, would like to read the full study and see the p-values and correlation coefficients. There is a massive amount of litigation going on in France right now over farmers and vintners being exposed to chemicals in various herbicides and pesticides that everyone was assured were safe, though I believe they tended to use them more liberally than most other places in the world. 

 

We've seen what's happened with all the chemicals Dupont swore were safe despite knowing there were no levels at which they were safe in humans. They kept right on pumping them into waterways denying it all while they had documentation of cancer and blood disorders from it. They did everything they could to bury or drag out lawsuits despite knowing full well what was going on. Every human on earth now has identifiable levels of PFAS compounds in our blood because of those lies, so I'd certainly err on the side of caution with things like this. There are no do-overs for those who get it wrong. 

 

Edit

In a thread on the same topic in another section someone pointed out the high amounts of both insecticides and pesticides used at private residences, which of course outpace courses massively in terms of total treated square footage. This study certainly doesn't address the fact that not only would more be sprayed at the surrounding homes as well, but that golf courses would be more likely to be surrounded by homes with yards, and often sizeable yards at that, so the total exposure for the entire area could be pretty high. That's a pretty big potential confounding variable that isn't discussed at all and just makes the study even more questionable.

 

It's still certainly worth considering for long-term health, but acting as though golf courses are the main culprit without thorough research is pretty alarmist and could be missing a much larger population in high density suburban neighborhoods equally likely to be exposed if that's the case.

Edited June 16 by PedronNiall