The significant increase in the number of Parkinson's patients is partly due to the use of pesticides in agriculture. A large new study is expected to provide more clarity later this year about the relationship between pesticides and Parkinson's disease.
This is stated by Professor Bas Bloem, a neurologist at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, in an interview with L1. Bloem received the Stevin Prize last summer, one of the country's highest scientific honors, for his groundbreaking research into Parkinson's disease.
This autumn, the neurologist, his patients, and other interested parties will be treated by the city of Nijmegen to three days of an international congress on Parkinson's.
“We know that farmers have a much higher risk of Parkinson's. Residents near agricultural fields have a higher risk of the disease. And when the pesticides used on the land are given to a mouse, it damages precisely the area involved in Parkinson's, and that mouse also develops Parkinson's symptoms,” Bloem said.
Dutch author Karin Pinckaers – Lumey was diagnosed with Parkinson's at the age of 43. Starting in September, she will participate in a new study with Bas Bloem to investigate the impact of movement on the progression of the disease.
Bloem expects that the new study with Utrecht’s IRAS will demonstrate that findings abroad also apply in the Netherlands. “In the United States, Canada, and France, Parkinson's occurs like a patchwork quilt across the country. The disease is not evenly distributed across the population.
If you overlay that patchwork with areas of agriculture and viticulture, they overlap exactly. In France, Parkinson's has already been officially recognized as an occupational disease among winegrowers for this reason. The German government is about to take the same step,” Bloem said.
This week, the court in Zutphen demanded one and a half years in prison for the 64-year-old director/owner, his 37-year-old son, and a 45-year-old employee of an importer and supplier of pesticides. The prosecution also demands a fine of 300,000 euros for the company, which allegedly earned millions through fraud.
According to the Public Prosecution Service (OM), the company was careless with regulations regarding the import and export of crop protection products. For example, it was stated that products were made in the Netherlands, while in reality this took place in China. The three suspects were questioned by the judge for a total of five days about this.
The company, a manufacturer and exporter of crop protection products, already came under scrutiny by the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority in 2012. The authority says that half of the imported crop protection products come from China, while the use of those products is not permitted in the Netherlands.