Farms still use banned pesticide—and it doubles your Parkinson’s risk

Living near a farm that still uses a banned pesticide more than doubles the chances of developing Parkinson’s disease.

The pesticide Lorsban (chlorpyrifos) was banned more than 20 years ago for domestic use and major restrictions on its application on agricultural land were introduced in 2021—and yet it is still widely used.

People who live near a farm that uses Lorsban are up to 2.5 times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease if they’ve been exposed to the chemical for many years, say researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

Although Lorsban’s use has been restricted, other pesticides that also include similar harmful chemicals are still freely available, the researchers warn.

They examined data from 829 Parkinson’s patients and compared them to 824 healthy people, and estimated exposure to chlorpyrifos by combining California pesticide use records with the locations of participants’ homes and workplaces, and this allowed scientists to reconstruct likely exposure patterns across many years.

To explore how the pesticide might damage the brain, the team also conducted laboratory experiments. Mice were exposed to aerosolized chlorpyrifos for 11 weeks through inhalation methods designed to mimic how people typically encounter the chemical, and additional experiments in zebrafish investigated the biological processes involved in the damage.

Nearly one million people in the United States are living with Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurological disorder that causes tremors, muscle stiffness, and increasing difficulty with movement. Although scientists have classified Parkinson’s as being mainly a genetic disease, many are beginning to suspect the impact of environmental pollutants, and especially pesticides.

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