Do not live near a golf course

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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The incidence of Parkinson’s Disease has been increasing as our population ages. It adds about $50 Billion in direct annual health care costs, so it is of macroeconomic relevance, and causes a whole lot of human misery.

A 2025 study demonstrated that golf courses significantly increases the risk of Parkinson’s. Specifically, the risk of Parkinson’s is highest for those who live within 1-3 miles of a golf course, with the risk diminishing with distance. The study was controlled for gender, ethnicity, income, and age.

Those who lived within a mile of the course had a 126% higher risk than those >6 miles away.

Individuals getting their tap water from groundwater water service areas with a golf course had nearly doubled odds of Parkinson’s compared with individuals getting tap water from groundwater water service areas without golf courses.

Exposure to pesticides is believe to be the cause. Just my opinion but I suspect if pesticide exposure from golf courses is high enough to increase the incidence of Parkinson’s, other bad stuff is probably happening. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2833716

Another example of why folks should be far more afraid of pesticides than GMOs.

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I wonder if there are other disease clusters associated with them as well.

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Don’t know about that. These studies are not trivial to do and the money for doing them is rapidly being shut off by the GOP.

Will add that the link between pesticides and Parkinson’s is pretty strong. Probably why farmers have a higher rate of Parkinson’s than the general public.

Perhaps the EPA does serve a purpose…?

One thing one can do that may help is to drink coffee.

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Interesting study. Anecdotally my father in law started playing golf daily when he was in his thirties (he owned a small seafood wholesaler and was able to get his trucks loaded early a.m. and golf after that). And despite being a legendary local athlete he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s when he was in his 60’s and died in his early 70’s.

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Maybe the diuretic effect of caffeine flushes the pesticides out before they can do damage.