In July of this year, the EPA under President Trump assured the public that "chemtrails" are not real. Those white streams of clouds from airplanes are just that: clouds. They form when hot, moist aircraft exhaust freezes into ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. Despite several states enacting laws forbidding "chemtrails", they don't actually exist. The federal government promises they are not spraying harmful chemicals into the sky that you end up breathing.
So you can take in that fresh air without fear.
Except for one thing.
Depending on where you're standing, the air you breathe does have concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These are manmade chemicals used in industry, manufacturing, and common household products. Manmade VOCs found in the air include perchloroethylene (used in dry cleaning), carbon tetrachloride (formerly used as a cleaning fluid and refrigerant), 1,1,1-trichloroethane (a degreasing solvent), methylene chloride (used in paint strippers and adhesives), and benzene (a gasoline component and industrial chemical). Every single one is toxic to humans, deadly at sufficient doses or under prolonged exposure. Benzene, to choose one as an example, is linked to leukemia.
Unlike with chemtrails, the EPA won't be telling the public VOCs are not real. Because they are.
Of course, there's a good reason most of us aren't too concerned about breathing them in. These compounds are heavily regulated and monitored by the EPA. Concentrations in the air are at safe levels. The Clean Air Act gives the EPA authority to limit VOC emissions from vehicles, fuel, paints, solvents, and industrial sources. Consumer products that use VOCs -- like adhesives and paint and cleaners -- must meet certain standards. As do industries that release VOCs in their refineries and factories. And if the regulations fail, there's the sheer size of the atmosphere around us. Any chemicals that do get released disperse quickly.
That's the hope anyway. But some of those hopes just vanished.
Researchers from the Barrow Neurological Institute and Washington University in St. Louis published a paper this July proving a certain invisible manmade chemical escaped these regulations. Based on their research, this VOC has been slowly killing us in diabolical ways we'd never traced back to its presence in the air. Until now.
The chemical is called Trichloroethylene, or, more commonly, TCE. It's clear and colorless, and smells like chloroform (a sweet, strong oder -- in case you never had the chance to smell chloroform). TCE is a powerful cleaner. Like a bad infomercial, it claims to remove grease like no other product on the planet. And from very tough surfaces -- machinery and metals and other industrial parts. TCE is also used in some household products: typewriter correction fluid, paint remover, spot cleaner, and carpet-cleaning fluids for example.
The problem is -- like all VOCs -- if humans breathe it in, TCE can kill in the right doses. Also, if it leaks into the environment, TCE has a remarkable ability to stick around for a long time -- decades, if it gets into the soil or groundwater. In fact, TCE holds the dubious distinction of being the most frequently reported organic contaminant in groundwater.
But the Barrow study wasn't so concerned with groundwater. They found danger in the very air we breathe.
What prompted researchers to start the study was a strong implication TCE was a potential neurotoxicant contributing to Parkinson's disease. Most of the proof was from occupational exposure: People who worked with solvents with TCE had an increased risk of Parkinson's disease, with the onset of symptoms sometimes occurring 10-40 years after initial TCE exposure.
Then there was Camp Lejeune. You may have seen commercials about this case. People who lived at the military base in North Carolina were drinking TCE-contaminated water. The chances those people would be struck with Parkinson's disease was 70% higher than people living on other bases.
Did TCE somehow induce Parkinson's Disease? That's what the new study set out to prove, or disprove, once and for all. They would close a major gap in the existing data. The Barrow and Washington University researchers would look at the nationwide impact of TCE in the air, anywhere in the United States.
The study covered 16 years and involved an impressive sample of 1,354,554 people, including 221,789 diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. To see who in the sample was exposed to TCE and by how much, researchers used EPA National Air Toxics Assessment data from 2002, 14-16 years before the people with the disease were diagnosed. This gap allowed for the time it takes Parkinson's symptoms to develop.
If the connection was there, you'd expect places with high concentrations of TCE in the air to match up with the homes of people who eventually got the disease.
What they found was even more striking.
Not only did the nationwide, population-based case-control study confirm a significant and dose-dependent positive association between ambient TCE exposure and the risk of Parkinson's disease. It showed a higher risk of Parkinson's the closer you lived to high TCE levels. There was even evidence of higher case rates where wind carried contaminates compared with areas away from the winds.
TCE is a small molecule that can easily pass through the blood-brain barrier and damage our neurons. In the air, it's completely invisible. There are no streams of white clouds to point at and fear. There is just the silent, decades-long neurological damage that results in a devastating diagnosis you were never expecting would happen to you.
Will the EPA jump in to make us safer from TCE's? Hopefully. As of now, they are trending in the opposite direction. They are rolling back air toxic standards, in an effort to reduce regulatory burdens. These actions include weakening enforcement of VOC regulations.
We're all for letting industry thrive, so long as it's not resulting in more neurodegenerative diseases. No matter how clean your machine parts get, it's just not worth it.