My Brain Hurts

The Guardian last Sunday noted,

“[t]he numbers of sufferers of brain diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease, have soared across the West in less than 20 years, scientists have discovered.

The alarming rise, which includes figures showing rates of dementia have trebled in men, has been linked to rises in levels of pesticides, industrial effluents, domestic waste, car exhausts and other pollutants, says a report in the journal Public Health.”

Public Health as the name of a journal doesn’t jump out at me. There’s a Journal of Public Health published in the UK (nothing on Alzheimer’s and pollution in the latest issue) and an American Journal of Public Health. However, after searching a couple of different places (National Library of Medicine, Emory University’s MedWeb), no Public Health emerges. The search will continue, and for now, we take matters as they are presented.

A couple of observations: first, the reported trebling in brain diseases occurred from the 1970s to the 1990s. The increase could be due to advances in diagnoses as much as from pollutant exposures. Second, some of these disorders have causes other than chemical exposures. For example, an inactive lifestyle, including watching too much television, has been offered as a risk factor for Alzheimer’s syndrome.

There are concerns about neurobehavioral and cognitive disorders from exposures to chemicals, including PCBs, chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides, dioxins and furans, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). But it’s probably too speculative to be attributing a generalized rise in incidence of brain disorders to chemical exposures.