Connection Between Pesticides and ALS?

[Arkansawyer]

It seems like somewhere a while back I read that there may be a connection between pesticide exposure and ALS. This has always stuck in my mind because I am an anxious person in general. Unfortunately my neighborhood is one that sprays a time or two a week for mosquito control purposes. This has caused me no end of anxiety but so far I have always been inside my home when they drive those spray trucks through the neighborhood. However tonight I came back from the store and could smell it in the air when I got out of the car. I asked my wife and sure enough they drove through spraying that crud about 15-20 mins before I got there. I panicked and rushed to take a shower in case it was somehow on me. When I got out I could swear that my face was a bit red and blotchy though neither my wife nor mother could see anything. I am a bit calmer now but my face has itched ever since and now I am afraid that from breathing that junk in I may develop Als.Am I way out there on this one? Does anyone else let stuff like this set them off?

 

[Gracer]

I may say that connection between ALS and pesticides is still doubtful, while connection between mosquitos and severe haemorragic virus disease with high mortality rate called "Yellow fever" etc. is well proven and undoubtful for well over 100 years I think. So pesticides are here not for getting you ALS even as a remote side effect, and mosqitos are not just annoying humming tiny beasts. Thanks to the science, we do not use DDT anymore for their control Good example of what anxiety is doing to us. By the way your fascial itching may in fact be an urticaria, very common in us, especially after contact with water (as you had shower and probably quite hot one), and especially possible when we are in acute bout of anxiety.The key issue is that YOU WOULD NOT deveolp nothing more severe from single exposure of pesticide, and even from repeated one. The link between pesticides and ALS was speculated in the attempt to explain increased rate of ALS in young running athletes like soccer and football abnd baseball players, especially two cases when the whole teams in Mexico and Italy appeared to be affected. This was still a speculation, as no significant levels of pesticides was found in them (moreover, those may not for flying beasts but for grass eating ones), and it never was proved. At least, there are tons of teams, both adult and youngsters, who play and live till their good 70th like Mr. Pele well without ALS.I personally think those team cases may rather be realted to the 'vitamine' pills which coaches are used to give to their boys to boost them or maybe to nice happy drugs they boys may take in one of the night clubs being let on their own, then to any other mysterious source I remember also a case of M.J.Fox, who get unusually early Parkinsosn onset, and same had happened to another three or four people who were members of the same team making some very popular serial drama in early 80s when he was a teenager in Canada. God knows what they eat, drink or smoke during this time, but the result is really evident - four or five early Parkinsonics in the same team. Surely not they were bathing in the pesticides