EXPOSURE to low levels of the pesticide rotenone makes monkeys develop Parkinson’s disease, suggesting it has the same effect on people too.
“It provides proof of the concept that a lifetime of exposure to certain toxins can result in Parkinson’s disease,” says Timothy Greenamyre of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, whose team carried out the work.
The cause of Parkinson’s has long been elusive. Only a small fraction of cases are inherited. The best evidence that certain chemicals can cause the disease came when a substance called MPTP caused a cluster of cases among San Francisco drug users in the 1980s. But this could have been…
