Everyone Has Parkinson’s Now

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“Hello?” My voice came out scratchy as this was the first word I’d said that morning.

“Well, I have Parkinson’s”. My Dad’s not known for beating around the bush and the early wake up call is one of his signature moves. I describe him as a more cynical, less obnoxious, but equally funny, Larry David. He’d been navigating a series of weird health symptoms – a raspy voice, shaky hands, dizziness, walking funny – and going to all kinds of doctors – his primary care provider, an ear nose and throat specialist, multiple physical therapists, a neurologist – to figure out what’s wrong.

“What the –” Before I could fully reply, he told me to hang on a minute. I could tell he called me from the Bluetooth in his car so I thought maybe he had to focus while he merged onto the highway or parked his car. 

“Welcome to McDonalds, can I take your order?” It was perfect comedic timing. He finished telling me about his poor health diagnosis and then proceeded to get unhealthy fast food. 

After ordering a Diet Coke and a hamburger he asked me why I was laughing. His failure to see the humor made me cackle even harder. 

“I just wasn’t expecting that,” I said, suppressing my instinct to give him a hard time for ordering McDonalds. 

We let our opinions be known in our family, whether we are asked for input or not. For as long as I can remember, my siblings and I have hounded dad about his love for soda (“pop” as we say in the midwest) and his affinity for sedentary activities. His response to our critiques is typically frustration that’s not so hidden beneath a sarcastic comment like: “Wow, thanks, guys. I’m not sure how I lived life before you were here to tell me what to do.” 

It’s tempting to chalk Dad’s habits up to personal choice. Heck, I have hounded him about them for decades. I’ve come to realize that many of the everyday decisions we think are ours are often shaped by commercial forces we barely notice.

“What do you mean you have Parkinson’s?” I asked, proud of myself for not giving him too much grief about his McDonalds run. I mean, where else can you grab a tasty meal that’s under 10 bucks, without getting out of your car? 

“The neurologist told me that the diagnosis can explain a lot of the random symptoms I’ve been having. She said that it doesn’t have to be the end of the world. Everybody has Parkinson’s now and the cases we see in the media are typically the worst of the worst.”

Once we got off the phone, I stared at the wall, digesting. I wanted to know why this was happening. Bad genes? Bad luck? Bad habits? Or perhaps there was something even bigger that I wasn’t seeing. I couldn’t get over what he said: “Everybody has Parkinson’s now” . 

Naturally, one search on Google Scholar led to another and soon, I found myself deep in research mode. In an attempt to understand what was happening to my dad, the literature showed me again all the quiet ways commercial-driven risk embeds itself in our daily lives.

While not “everybody” has or gets Parkinson’s Disease (PD), rates are indeed rising, and fast. From 1990 to 2014, the number of people with PD is thought to have more than doubled and is projected to double again by 2040; it is the fastest growing neurological disease in the world. 

PD is most often a result of a combination of environmental and genetic factors, meaning my dad’s diagnosis was not necessarily inevitable. Genetics may have opened the door, but his environment most likely sealed his fate. One peer-reviewed study goes as far to say that we are in the midst of a “Parkinson’s Pandemic”, linking it, at least in part, to industrialization.

Industrialization as a source of a ‘pandemic’? My browser tabs continued to multiply. 

It turns out that my dad lives right in the middle of the “Parkinson’s Belt”, an area with abnormally high rates of PD. Not coincidentally, Cleveland, Ohio, where I grew up and where my parents still live, is also in the midst of the “Rust Belt”, a swath of the U.S that used to be the country’s industrial powerhouse for manufacturing, steel-making and coal producing. Towards the end of the 20th century, though, the area experienced decline as outsourcing became more and more the norm (hence the “rust”). Now, these very same regions have distinctly high rates of Parkinson’s. 

It’s not hard to connect the dots. The area is steeped in a legacy of industrial pollution. I mean, the Cuyahoga, a river that runs through the city, literally caught on fire in 1969 because of the flammable toxic sludge it turned into. Contamination is not a thing of the past either; in 2025 the American Lung Association ranked Cleveland as the 9th most polluted city in the U.S, with higher year round particle pollution than both Chicago and New York City. 

I kept researching, familiarizing myself with the products and habits most often linked to Parkinson’s. First, I found TCE (‘trichloroethylene’ to you, nerds). It’s a solvent that shows up in all sorts of everyday products like cleaning agents and is also used in a lot of industrial processes. Despite the mountains of evidence linking TCE to Parkinson’s and other health risks (it’s also thought to be a carcinogen), it wasn’t officially recognized by the EPA as harmful to human health until 2023. 

TCE is cheap, effective, and deeply woven into U.S. industries. Pivoting away from it would be costly, so it’s no surprise that businesses are averse to incurring additional operational expenses, which, let’s be honest, would likely be passed on to consumers. But aren’t we already paying the price in illness?

Restrictions for TCE were finally set to kick in in the U.S in early 2025, but the effective start date for restrictions has (again) been delayed by the EPA due to “pending litigation”. Ah, a classic move by corporations – using legal proceedings to delay or completely halt regulations.

Another major suspect linked to PD is the chemicals found in certain pesticides and herbicides. More than 70 countries have completely banned the commercial herbicide, paraquat, which is widely accepted as an accelerator of Parkinson’s. The United States has not. While the U.S. shouldn’t adopt policies just to follow other countries, corporate lobbying often sits at the heart of why it doesn’t. Similar to TCE, there’s been limited action to protect the American public despite the growing evidence of harmful effects.

Pesticide companies have a history of hiding evidence about the dangers of their products and casting doubt on independent research to evade responsibility. It’s a classic move — straight out of the commercial determinants playbook (see It’s Time to Confront Business Harms: An introduction to commercial determinants for more).

Right now, thousands of lawsuits are underway against Syngenta, the maker of a paraquat-based weed killer, for allegedly suppressing evidence linking their product to degenerative neurological diseases. A trove of internal Syngenta documents dating back to the 1950s, emerged during discovery that suggest the company’s public messaging contradicted what it privately knew about the risks of their products.

I kept digging. It’s not like Dad works in a factory, or does a lot of farming, or even yard work, so the idea that he could have been exposed to something like paraquat or TCE felt like a stretch. But, as many of you know, chemicals don’t stay neatly contained. They drift, leach, and linger, so exposure doesn’t have to be direct to be dangerous. Even if Dad wasn’t handling the substances himself, that didn’t mean he hadn’t been exposed to something toxic. Plus, Dad always worked near industrial areas, so who knows what might have seeped into the air, the soil, or the groundwater. Studies show that living close to an industrial site increases your risk of both acute and chronic diseases. 

It’s not just farmland and industrial sites that pose a risk of exposure, either. Though the EPA banned the use of paraquat on golf courses in 2021, there’s research suggesting that living in close proximity to a course increases odds of developing Parkinson's. In one study, the authors found that living within 1 mile of a golf course was associated with 126% increased odds of developing PD compared with folks living farther away. Here’s a not-so-fun-fact: The house I grew up in and where my parents still live is less than a mile away from the nearest golf course. 

Beyond pesticides and industrial chemicals, other products are also linked to Parkinson’s. The final trail I followed that morning was about a potential link between diet sodas (pop) and Parkinson’s. There’s an emerging hypothesis that consuming large amounts of pop, specifically the artificial sweetener used in diet pop, aspartame, may accelerate the progression of PD. 

This hit close to home. Together, Diet Coke, Diet Dr. Pepper, and Diet Mountain Dew, form a major food group for my Dad. His soft drink habit might seem like a personal quirk, but it’s another example of how corporate systems quietly shape our behavior. First, marketing convinces us that ‘diet’ is a better choice. Since diet sodas are less sugary it’s natural to think they are therefore less harmful to our health. Add to this health halo a taste optimized for wanting more, an irresistible caffeine kick, and a lifetime of absorbing targeted marketing that suggests soda equals fun, friends, and satisfaction, and habits lock in. And then of course, after starting the habit, it’s hard to stop. 

Learning about the possible PD risks of diet soda was more evidence of how commercial influences on our health are everywhere, all around us, all at once. We’ll never be able to prove why Dad developed Parkinson’s; it’s notoriously hard to prove how exposures to harmful substances conspire to trigger disease onset. While genetics were certainly at play, likely too were harmful activities of big businesses. My dad may have had a lifetime of environmental exposure to PD-linked substances: TCE from the industrial factories in his hometown, paraquat from the golf course next door, and aspartame from daily diet drinks. 

The rise of Parkinson's is another familiar commercially determined tale involving production, sale, and marketing of harmful products, fighting regulations that clean up industrial supply chains, and tactics of deny, delay, and defend that this publication will continue to document for our readers. 

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The Emerging Evidence of the Parkinson Pandemic 

By E. Ray Dorsey and 4 colleagues in The Journal of Parkinson’s Disease, 2018

Although Parkinson’s is a noncommunicable condition, the authors argue that it exhibits many of the same hallmark features as a pandemic. Using historical trends and Global Burden of Disease data, the authors demonstrate that the number of people with Parkinson’s more than doubled since 1990 and is projected to double again by the year 2040. A major argument of the paper is that the effects of industrialization (e.g., exposure to pesticides and industrial solvents) are significant contributors to rising Parkinson’s prevalence. An effective application of a commercial determinant lens on a global health issue. 

Secret Files Suggest Chemical Giant Feared Weedkiller’s Link to Parkinson’s Disease

By Carey Gillam and Aliya Uteuova in The Guardian, 2022

An interesting Guardian investigation into how a major pesticide manufacturer, Syngenta may have known about the potential health risks associated with their products long before the public. The article offers a tangible example of the corporate playbook in action – denying harm, working behind the scenes to ensure a certain scientist wouldn’t make it onto an EPA advisory board, and more. A valuable article that brings to light how commercial actors can drive scientific uncertainty and delay public health protections.