this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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It's the pesticides in the grass...

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[–] Saleh@feddit.org 45 points 1 day ago (3 children)

That said, 126% increased odds sounds like a lot but if the odds are 1 in 1000 and the study size contains only 9000 individuals then the usual odds would be 9 cases but 10 cases would represent a 900% increase.

I think you should check your calculation again. A 900% increase from 9 expected cases would be 90 cases.

Also the abstract already explains your questions:

Findings This case-control study found the greatest risk of PD within 1 to 3 miles of a golf course, and that this risk generally decreased with distance. Effect sizes were largest in water service areas with a golf course in vulnerable groundwater regions.

Exposures Distance to golf courses, living in water service areas with a golf course, living in water service areas in vulnerable groundwater regions, living in water service areas with shallow municipal wells, and living in water service areas with a municipal well on a golf course.

So if the local waterplant is extracting ground water where pesticides leach in, that increases the effects, which is to be expected.

Finally there is plenty of harmful chemicals that are known to be harmful but thanks to lobbying remain legal decades after the fact is established. See PFAS and Glyphosate for current examples.

[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

To add to your chemical point, once the aquifer (the water under the ground) is contaminated with chemicals, it is nearly impossible to clean up and must be treated as it is pumped out for use. It isn't like a lake that can heal from damages over time with plants and animals accumulating the toxins. They are stuck there forever until they are either pumped out of a well or flow through the aquifer until it reachs a spring where the water reachs the surfaces, which could be 100s of kms away and take 100s of years for the water to get there.

If you've ever seen an old gas station fenced off with random posts/metal poles around the site, it is probably an array of monitoring wells to track the concentration and movement of contaminated water.

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago

I'm kind of glad about that water thing because there's a golf course about a mile downhill and I don't know where they get their water but ours is piped in from an uphill reservoir quite far in the other direction. Which might have all kinds of other unknowns in it, of course, but I'm so old I'm probably mostly microplastics and carcinogens by now.