Sun May 8, 2016.
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| Workers put rotenone into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal during the Asian Carp Rapid Response Project in 2009. Ryan Jackson and Kevin Johnson were tasked with tracking the chemical’s path. Both have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. William DeShazer/Chicago Tribune |
It was well after dark on Dec. 2, 2009, when a team of government workers, wearing thick gloves and respiratory masks, began to pour 2,200 gallons of milky white liquid into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in Illinois.
Ryan Jackson, then 34, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, watched the work begin from the shore, before readying his own boat with a colleague, Kevin Johnson, and heading out onto the water. The men were tasked with tracing the chemical’s path by injecting a pink fluorescent dye into the water where the translucent toxin would be.
They were told the chemical, known as rotenone, was not toxic to humans, only to fish. They were told protective clothing was not necessary. But Jackson still recalls the potent chemical scent that accompanied the poison, and the way a steam vapor hung over the water despite below-freezing temperatures.
Before dawn, the bodies of tens of thousands of fish flapped at the water’s surface, convulsing violently before growing lifeless. They blanketed the canal like thick, silver algae, and marked one of the largest fish kills in U.S history.
Seven months later, while eating dinner with his family at an O’Charley’s restaurant in Mahomet, Ill., Jackson’s right hand began shaking uncontrollably — tremors that ultimately came to affect his entire body and have not stopped since. “Like you are sitting in an idle car, and you can sort of feel the engine vibrating,” he said.
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| Ryan Jackson, right, and Kevin Johnson, in the cabin, man a U.S. Geological Survey boat used to track rotenone on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal during the Asian Carp Rapid Response Project in 2009. Jackson and Johnson spent 30 hours tracking the rotenone plume and both have since been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. William DeShazer/Chicago Tribune |
Jackson, who grew up and went to college in Albuquerque, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurological disorder, at age 37. He is among just 2 percent of people with Parkinson’s whose symptoms show up before the age of 60. He is also one of a handful of people whose neurological disease may be linked to rotenone.
His colleague, Johnson, also would be diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease within two years of working with the chemical.
The relationship between pesticides, including rotenone, and Parkinson’s disease is one that has come under increasing scrutiny by scientists, workers and doctors. This connection is hotly disputed by people in the fishery management community, including the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, who say rotenone is safe and a crucial tool in their work.
In February, the state department announced a fish management plan for the Gila Wilderness that proposed treating streams with rotenone to remove rainbow and brown trout. Emptying the waters would set the stage for the department to reintroduce Gila trout, a threatened native species. Officials say it is paramount to restore the species to its native habitat, and that the trout are an important draw for many anglers.
On Thursday, the department will review the rotenone proposal during a public meeting in Silver City.
Questions raised decades earlier
The potential link between rotenone and Parkinson’s was studied well before the Chicago canal incident. In 2000, a study published in Nature Neuroscience showed that “chronic, systemic exposure” to rotenone in rats induced Parkinson’s-like symptoms by inhibiting the brain’s ability to produce energy for cell function.
A 2005 study that examined the four most common neurotoxins linked to Parkinson’s noted that due to the short half-life of rotenone, it was unlikely the substance would leach into or remain in groundwater or soil for more than a few days.
“The likelihood of PD being caused by an environmental exposure to rotenone is low, to not say null,” the study says.
But within five years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had asked manufacturers to voluntarily cancel the use of rotenone as a pesticide in homes and for agriculture, where it had been used as an insecticide and piscicide (fish killer) since 1947. Rotenone’s safety for humans has, in fact, been called into question since the mid-’70s. However, because it is derived from a root plant, it had long been considered organic and was used liberally in gardening products and to treat dog fleas. It was rubbed directly onto organic produce.
In 2011, the first of several studies pointed to an increased likelihood of Parkinson’s disease in farmers in Iowa and North Carolina who had used the chemical and developed the neurological disorder — at a rate 2.5 times higher than those not exposed to the chemical.
Samuel Goldman, a physician and a principal investigator in neurology at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, is one of several epidemiologists who co-authored the study and continues to examine the ties between rotenone and Parkinson’s disease.
“Things like rotenone and many other causative agents are really hard to assess because they are not persistent in the environment,” Goldman said. “We are generally dependent on self-reporting.”
He said this type of science is hard to get funded — but without such studies, the correlation between smoking and lung cancer wouldn’t have been understood. “A lot of these compounds are relatively nontoxic in the short term because you don’t get cancer overnight, you get cancer over 30 years,” Goldman said. “And neurodegeneration, that’s a slow process, and it hasn’t been studied very well.”
The range of causes of Parkinson’s disease is still being researched. While certain genetic factors appear to affect a person’s risk of developing the disorder, its onset increasingly has been linked to environmental factors.
One long-fought battle to link Parkinson’s disease to pesticide exposure was won in 2010. That year, the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs announced that the estimated 2.6 million veterans who fought in the Vietnam War and were exposed to Agent Orange, a dioxin-based herbicide, had a higher probability of developing Parkinson’s disease. As a result, they would be able to receive health care and disability benefits from the government.
Between 1962 and 1971, U.S. military planes sprayed Agent Orange over more than 4 million acres of Vietnam’s forests and farms to expose Viet Cong soldiers hidden within the country’s foliage.
The U.S. government acknowledged later that American soldiers were experiencing the fallout from the environmental poisoning. Under the Agent Orange Act passed in 1991, the government began providing benefits to veterans who had developed a variety of cancers, heart disease and, eventually, Parkinson’s from exposure to the chemical.
“Suggestive but limited evidence that exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides used during the Vietnam War is associated with an increased chance of developing Parkinson’s disease,” says the VA’s website, which cites a 2008 study examining the link between Parkinson’s and Agent Orange.
Goldman says the evidence linking Agent Orange to Parkinson’s is less extensive than that connecting the disease to rotenone.
If you compare the two, he said, “you will be impressed at the contrast of how much more data there is for rotenone.”
Agent Orange, Goldman noted, was one of several chemicals initially believed to be safe for humans. The list includes DDT, the infamous insecticide people showered in to ward off mosquitoes and typhoid in the 1940s that since has been banned as a likely carcinogen.
“They better have damn good reason for using the rotenone,” Goldman said of the New Mexico fisheries managers. “I am sure they think they do, or they wouldn’t be using it.”
Dick Schaefer, 80, of Bethesda, Md., was the director of the Office of Fisheries Conservation for the National Marine Fisheries Service when he retired in 2002. But his first job was eliminating unwanted fish populations for the New Jersey Game and Fish Department in the late 1950s.
He retired 15 years ago, the same year he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
“In retrospect, I would have been much happier knowing about the potential effects of rotenone in those days,” he said.
“Hell, we worked in bathing suits.”
Species conservation vs. risk
Since Jackson and his colleague, Johnson, were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, their department, the Illinois Water Science Center, a division of the USGS in Urbana, Ill., has decided rotenone is not worth the risk and no longer uses the substance.
But most fishery agencies defend their use of rotenone and are critical of studies linking it to the neurological disease.
Officials with the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish say they have treated streams in the state with rotenone at least four times since 2003. Each treatment has undergone an analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act, a public scoping period and a review by the state Water Quality Control Commission. They are required to take water samples ensuring the chemical has dissolved from the treated streams, and workers have been extensively trained in aquatics pesticide management, they say. This includes more than 40 hours of coursework — which can be counted as college credit. Administrators are required to pass a series of certification tests and undergo annual education updates.
Kirk Patten, the assistant chief of fisheries in the state who is also a rotenone trainer, called the agency’s programs conducted with the chemical “very successful.” He said he has not heard of any health issues or injuries from his administrators, save for a few sprained ankles.
Those who administer the chemical into streams, where it is generally diluted to 2 parts per million, are required to wear long sleeves, gloves, goggles and a paper dust mask. If they are mixing the chemical directly, a worker must wear a respiratory mask.
Both Patten and Mike Sloane, chief of the Fisheries Division, said they believed the studies related to rotenone and Parkinson’s disease were not relevant to the work they do in New Mexico’s waterways.
“It’s a very small amount, and we are very cautious about how it’s applied,” Sloan said of the agency’s use of rotenone, noting that for the proposed project in the Gila Wilderness, it will likely use about 2 gallons of rotenone across 20 miles.
“It’s safe, and it’s safe both for the people who apply it and downstream,” he said.
They also say focusing on questions about rotenone obscures the importance of reintroducing the native Gila trout.
Statewide, angling is a $268 million industry annually, attracting around 160,000 fishermen each year, according to a 2014 study commissioned by the state.
Patten says the fishing capacity in the Gila Wilderness is currently “close to nilch” — but rotenone can fix that.
In Arizona, however, community concern over rotenone led to the passage of Senate Bill 1453 in 2012, which enforced strict guidelines for how and when rotenone could be administered in the state, requiring public notice and an analysis of current science before each new application.
Mike Anderson, a native trout coordinator for the Arizona Game and Fish Department, also objected to the correlations between Parkinson’s disease for fisheries applicators but acknowledged that beyond an assessment by the EPA, a study specifically looking at Parkinson’s cases in fishery workers has not been done.
The EPA is now in the process of reviewing rotenone, an evaluation done for chemicals every 10 years.
“If we currently lost this tool,” Anderson said, “we would currently not be able to pursue conservation for [fish] species.”
‘We took them at their word’
Jackson’s work also was seen as essential in 2009. Asian carp DNA had been detected in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal — a carnivorous, invasive species of fish that can grow up to 2 feet long and weigh up to 110 pounds. The fish are known to spring out of the water, like the arc of a dolphin, and slap fishermen in the face. An electric underwater barrier meant to contain their spread had malfunctioned, and removing the fish was seen as imperative. The region has a lucrative fishing industry estimated at $7 billion annually, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
After the treatment, only one Asian carp was discovered among the carcasses.
Jackson and Johnson helped to trace one more rotenone plume that year, and in 2010, Jackson was honored with a Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal for his service to the government monitoring rotenone.
“The U.S. EPA told us in their briefing [in 2009] it was harmless to humans, so we took them at their word for it,” Johnson said. “And it was totally false.”
Because the men were surveying the plume but not administering the chemical, they were told protective gear, beyond life vests, was unnecessary, he said.
Over the last few years, both men said their dispositions have changed and they have become overwhelmingly “grumpy,” with mood swings triggered by the lack of dopamine in their brains. Johnson says he rarely sleeps more than four hours a night and suffers from night terrors.
Both men filed workers’ compensation claims but were denied. They have spoken with lawyers about filing toxic tort lawsuits, but so far the USGS has not taken any responsibility for the onset of their disease.
Because of their young age, they worry their disease will progress too far too quickly to allow them to work until retirement and provide for their families. Johnson has four children, two in college. Jackson’s two children are both under 12.
Jackson said he would like to reapply for workers’ compensation, but the process is lengthy and costs about $5,000.
He hopes more studies will be done and that the government will recognize the role it has played in his disease.
“There is some relief that maybe there is a relationship there,” he said. “And I am not alone out there.”
Contact Rebecca Moss at 505-986-3011 or rmoss@sfnewmexican.com.
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/health_and_science/two-hydrologists-blame-toxin-used-to-kill-fish-for-parkinson/article_989d0374-0f6b-5b8a-bf36-53a07561feae.html
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