I was born and raised in Eastern Washington, and the area is known to have
a high number of people with symptoms related to Multiple Sclerosis.
Is there a link? The MS Society doesn’t know, but they also haven’t ruled
it out:
Other MS clusters
have been reported over the years, but epidemiologists have been unable to
pinpoint causes. Research into reported clusters continues. In 2002, the
federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) awarded
research grants to five investigators to evaluate possible environmental risk
factors for MS and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in several U.S.
communities that are near hazardous waste sites. These studies, undergoing
final analysis, focused on sites in Illinois, Texas, Massachusetts, eastern
Washington and Missouri. While these efforts of ATSDR to understand the
potential health risks of hazardous waste exposure will provide important
information, there is no information to date to suggest a definite link between
hazardous waste and MS.http://www.nationalmssociety.org/What-is-MS/What-Causes-MS/Clusters
And according to a 2011 article in Seattle Magazine:
Washington is a hot spot for multiple
sclerosis…The National Multiple Sclerosis Society says multiple sclerosis is
more prevalent in the Pacific Northwest than almost anywhere else on
earth—there are about 12,000 known cases here. There’s no known cure, no known
cause and no proven explanation for its prominence in Washington. “If I knew
why, I would get a free trip to Stockholm to pick up my Nobel Prize,” says Dr.
James Bowen, medical director of the Multiple Sclerosis Center at Swedish
Medical Center’s Neuroscience Institute and board member of the National
Multiple Sclerosis Society.
What we do know is that every hour of every
day, someone is diagnosed with this debilitating disease of the central nervous
system. More than 400,000 people in the U.S.—2.5 million people worldwide—are
affected by MS. An often-progressive disease that attacks the brain, optic
nerves and spinal cord, MS symptoms vary from person to person: Some have
numbness in their arms and legs, others lose their eyesight or balance, and
some can become paralyzed and in very rare cases, even die. The complex disease
is like a giant unsolved jigsaw puzzle: Dozens of factors—such as lack of
vitamin D, diet, childhood viruses, gender, genetics, age and geography—are
believed to contribute to it, but have yet to be fully understood and formally
linked. Do our high-fat/dairy-rich diets and the vitamin D-depleting sunscreen
we are obsessed with contribute to MS?
Eastern Washington does have the Hanford nuclear power plant,
but come on really? I don’t remember seeing the Toxic Avenger or any number of
comic book characters with MS. Then what about pesticides? Eastern Washington
does produce a lot of fruit and hops, which do use pesticides, but again there are
no real links…only guesses.
Are these clusters real, and if so what should we do about
them? Is there anything that we can do? Other than the stupidly ridiculous
answer of shutting down all farming operations and waiting 50 years to see if
there are any significant changes.
Seriously…let’s think about this. If MS is somehow related
to pesticides and/or nuclear power, wouldn’t it be safe to assume that farmers
and/or nuclear power plant workers would have a higher MS rate among them than
anyone else? Maybe they do…maybe that question was stupid…the point is that we
don’t know what causes MS…all we have are ideas…and the fact that I was born
and raised in Eastern Washington.
