‘Parkinson’s is a man-made disease’: How a chemical Europe can’t quit may be driving the disease

We laugh at the people of the past for putting lead in their wine, arsenic on their walls, mercury on their skin, and deadly nightshade in their eyes. The people of the future will have plenty to laugh at us for. The chemicals we use now will be named in shocking factoids of how foolish and ignorant we were, just as we do for chemicals that people used before us.

We might think the people of the past did not know any better, but they absolutely did, just as we do for the chemicals we use now. Discontinuation of using a chemical comes long, LONG after science has rigorously documented its grave dangers, if it ever happens at all. People will continue to use it, and more importantly, businesses fight tooth and nail to continue peddling it, for far too long after we find out it's deadly. Lead was known to be lethal even in small amounts as early as the Roman republic, yet the vast majority of cities today still have a non-trivial amount of lead pipes in their potable water infrastructure just like the Romans did, houses built just a few decades ago still used lead paint, small piston aircraft use leaded fuel to this day, and don't forget that whole thing with lead solder being used in Stanley Cups, you know, water receptacles for drinking, because it's ever so slightly cheaper (and some electronics enthusiasts vehemently swear by lead solder and absolutely hate how "everything is switching to lead-free nowadays and it's slightly harder to get it to stick to the pins being soldered").

Basically, don't hold your breath that we'll get rid of any of these chemicals just because we found out they're lethal or crippling to human health or whatever. That has never once happened in the history of humans using chemicals.

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