Occupational Exposures May Be Linked to Death from Autoimmune Disease

the large sample, and matched control method, are prone to false positives

i need to see replication before i put too much faith in this

I pulled the article today. it is 10 years old with not clear followup. as I suspected, the sample size was so large that even very small glitches are judged significant. they also asked many many questions and did not make a statistical correction for multiple questions - so some bias towards "yes"

the general gist is the pesticides, and industrial toxins, and silica or lead seem to be environmental triggers that interact with genetic vulnerabilities to produce various autoimmune disease. this seems reasonable and consistent with other emerging research on environmental toxins.

the bits about teachers and occupations with high-public exposure should have been left out. any confidence for an odds ratio that includes 1.0 is not significant, and all of these started at 1.01 - so the significance was very marginal - and if corrected for multiple questions, would not be significant.

but in general, if we have autoimmune of IBD in our families, we should advise young family members to seek occupations with very few toxin exposures - even ones at "safe" levels. For these family members, an organic diet low in meat protein (meat concentrates toxins) might also be advisable for a healthier life.

for those with IBD, the effects were so small and only show in population averages (i.e., many people did not show these connections) that it would be impossible to ascribe occupation as a primary cause of our IBD.

I will look for some links, but the point about meat concentrating toxins was just the general observation that the higher in the food chain the more concentrated environmental toxins. For example any pesticide on grain is concentrated in meat of herbivores. Toxins in water get into small fish (e.g., mercury), and get concentrated when bigger fish eat the small ones. Once we begin eating other meat eaters (or their milk/eggs), we could be eating very concentrated environmental exposures. Mostly we only eat meat eaters with fish, birds, and reptiles (e.g., alligators). We don't really eat land carnivores.

The point about organic was that even plants would have lower pesticide residue, and organic meats are more likely to be fed pesticide-free foods.