Neurologist Samuel Goldman, MD, MPH, had long felt obligated to dive into the question of whether the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that had contaminated the drinking water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune up to the mid-1980s were associated with an increased risk of Parkinson disease.
He had already contributed to the scant human epidemiological evidence supporting a causal link between the industrial solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) and Parkinson disease risk, which until now amounted to his own 2011 study of 99 discordant twin pairs, several case reports, and a cluster of 30 coworkers in a small manufacturing facility.