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Ms. May, My mother, Dolores, age 75, PD for 10+ years, wishes to participate in your survey in hopes that this information can be used for the benefit of all on this list. Hence I am submitting this on her behalf. Dolores hails from Detroit, Michigan where she lived for 20 years. Before my father proposed to her and whisked her away to California, she had an early childhood incident which she recalls vividly. She was standing in the kitchen with her older brother when the refridgerator suddenly fell down and spilled some kind of chemical with a strong odor all over the floor. Presumably this was probably the coolant, but she has no idea what was contained in refridgerators of that era. The accident happened so fast that she had no time to get away before she and her brother were exposed to the fumes. Both of them became quite ill and got severe headaches for the next two or three days after. Her brother later developed Multiple Sclerosis and died 15 years ago. In 1957, my mother was offered a job in Italy. I was born there a year later and in 1971, when I was 13 and she was 51, our little family moved from our former apartment to a lovely house in the seaside resort of Tirrenia. What we perhaps should have researched before we moved was the fact that Tirrenia has long had a history of mosquito infestations. It is surrounded by the Mediterranean on one side, and a swampy forest with boggy creeks on the other. Several times a year, the pesticide truck would drive slowly down each of the streets in the community and spray everything in sight with a thick foggy mist of repellant that would stick in our throats and eyes and make us choke. We suspect it was DDT. We put up with this exposure for five years because not much was known of the dangers back then. While I was growing up, my father's main livlihood was as an oil painter, instructor and art history teacher. As such, he would often hold classes in our home and/or would travel wherever he could teach. We would help him organize all his paints and erect the easels. Many times we stayed as observers because he has always been a wealth of knowledge. He would also paint the walls of each of our rented homes whenever they needed it and would do home improvements. My mother was exposed to many different kinds of paints, varnishes, etc. from the time she married my father until he retired; a total of some 45 years. My mother believes that any one of these factors could have contributed to the onset of her Parkinsons, let alone all of them combined. The final straw was when she started exhibiting symptoms of which she was very much afraid to admit to herself or her family, and of which she was powerless to control. Her right hand started to tremble, which later moved to encompass most of her right side and part of her left. She could no longer go on the long hikes in the beautiful forests of Germany where we moved to in 1976. Her posture became more stooped and she walked much more slowly, observing everything in her path very carefully. She tried to hide this from my father and I and her employer for three years until she could no longer go without medical assistance. She suffered much harrassment on the job where many that knew her outstanding previous competence had already retired and new employees were eyeing her responsible supervisory job as if it were a juicy porkchop just waiting to be had. She hung in there until she could retire with full benefits despite the hardships, but they took their toll. The stress was much more than she should ever have had to bear and I hope that this newer generation of the work force of which I am a third-generation part of will be much more compassionate and aware and will fight against such horrid discrimination. Sincerely, Valerie D. Brown [log in to unmask] CG for Dolores, 75, PD for 10+ years, Madopar, Movergan