Margaret "Peg" Hoskins still remembers the drums.
Not one or two. Fields of them.
For the three years she was stationed at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, the U.S. Navy veteran helped oversee cleanup of hundreds of industrial barrels of hazardous waste. Hoskins dug drums out of the ice, opened containers with missing labels and handled chemicals no one had properly explained.
McMurdo, at the southern tip of Antarctica’s Ross Island, is one of the most remote research stations on Earth, in what should have been one of the most pristine places on Earth. But from the mid-1950s through the late 1980s, the area was a dumping ground for chemicals, oil, discarded machinery and even nuclear waste.
Hoskins was in her late twenties and headed to the Persian Gulf in 1990 as Operation Desert Storm was just starting, when her mission got redirected to the Antarctic and what she considered a noble cause: to help the National Science Foundation clean up the decades of pollution on the frozen continent.
“I was sent down somewhat blindly,” Hoskins said. “I had no introduction to hazardous materials at all.”
It was only after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s 30 years later that she connected the toxic wastes she had handled to her disease. One was the solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE. She couldn’t believe how much is known about TCE’s links to cancer and other diseases including Parkinson’s.
“The hardest thing for me to understand is why we’re not doing everything we can,” she said. “Why the nation’s not doing everything we can to stop this.”
With no family history of Parkinson’s disease, retired U.S. Navy Commander Margaret “Peg” Hoskins traces her diagnosis to chemical exposure during military service in Antarctica — and calls attention to the lack of safeguards that left her and others vulnerable. (Emma Twombly/WUFT News)
“A landmark victory for the Parkinson’s community”
Colorless and sweet-smelling, TCE is a solvent that removes grease and oils and all manner of grime, making it popular for paint removers, dry cleaners and many industrial uses. Its dangers to human health are well known from cancers among military and civilian personnel and their children who were exposed to TCE-contaminated water at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune. It was also the polluting chemical in the story of more than 20 cases of childhood leukemia told in the John Travolta movie “A Civil Action.”
In fall 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposal to ban all uses of TCE, to protect people from “serious health risks including cancer, neurotoxicity and reproductive toxicity.” The following year, in December 2024, the Michael J. Fox Foundation called it a “landmark victory for the Parkinson’s community” when EPA finalized the ban.
But the victory has been delayed by legal challenges from the chemical industry, and some members of Congress want to overturn the ban. Originally scheduled to take effect in January 2025, its final provisions have been postponed several times, with the most recent extension scheduled for later this month on May 18.
Andi Lipstein Fristedt, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Policy Officer at the Parkinson's Foundation, says she’s concerned about the delay.
“It's been hard to see this ban really come to fruition in a way that will really fulfill the intent of protecting public health and protecting communities.” Lipstein said. “We're going to have to keep a really close eye on it and make sure that we really see this come into action.”
“There were no markings on anything”
Hoskins, now 63, was in her late 20s when she arrived in Antarctica. She and her team got to work chipping ice away from hundreds of barrels, using a long metal pole with a sharp edge. They’d rock the barrels loose, pull them out of packed snow and open them one by one.
Their job was to test the chemicals inside, label them and ready them for shipping to the United States. As Hoskins opened the different colored drums, she encountered various smells and textures.
“We’d be [like], ‘Oh, surprise!’,” she said. “Because there were no markings on anything.”
For the first year, she opened the barrels without protection or gloves. She remembers the trichloroethylene because no one could spell it for the new labels; they wrote the abbreviation TCE. Thirty years later, when she got her diagnosis, she would remember those three letters.
She didn’t ask questions. That was, until one day during her first year, she opened a barrel to find a bag labeled for nuclear disposal. The Navy had operated a small nuclear reactor on the base that was decommissioned after a leak.
She closed the drum. Her first call was to the base’s nuclear officer to help, the second to her commanding officer to insist on training and protective gear for her team.
“I'm not doing this anymore,” Hoskins told him. “You're going to send me to school.”
For the rest of her time at the frozen station, Hoskins kept up the same routine: chip snow, rock out the barrels, dig them up, open them to a surprise—but now with more protection and care.
Decades after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, Hoskins figured the TCE may have played a role in her illness. She can’t know for sure. But she’s doing all she can to warn others and push lawmakers to take the risks seriously.
Even with the TCE ban, the chemical poses risks across the United States at hundreds of EPA-designated Superfund sites, highly contaminated locations designated for long-term cleanup of hazardous waste. Some are in neighborhoods. Some are at military bases.
“Please go and get checked”
Hoskins sits on her couch in her beach-themed living room, soft hues of blue and sandy beige surrounding her, typing up letters. She advocated for not only the TCE ban, but a ban on paraquat, the herbicide linked to Parkinson’s. She has sent them to members of Congress, to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. She usually receives only a thank-you note for writing.
“These chemical companies are so powerful in Washington,” she said. She is afraid it’s going to take more people getting young-onset Parkinson’s, and more famous people like Michael J. Fox, before the message gets through.
About a decade after her service in Antarctica, Hoskins began having episodes where her legs would stop working or she’d lose control of her hand. “I had some kind of Parkinson's-like symptoms,” she said, “which they never identified as Parkinson's.”
Then three years ago, when a tremor in her legs wouldn’t go away, she finally got her diagnosis.
“Parkinson’s,” her doctor told her.
“A little bit of Parkinson's or a lot of Parkinson's?” she asked.
“There is no little or a lot,” her doctor said. “You just have it.”
Hoskins, who is extremely active, was in denial until she started researching and remembering the drums.
She most misses her independence. She can’t take long walks by herself anymore. A self-described “mermaid,” she can’t swim by herself anymore.
One thing she does have and appreciates in her life is her romance, and now, a wedding to look forward to. She is set to walk down the aisle in June and marry her partner and caregiver.
On a recent day, pink flower garlands filled her house as part of the preparations. She remained hopeful that the United States will push forward to ban the most dangerous chemicals.
She’s also getting back in touch with her former team in Antarctica. She’s found the names of the people who dug out drums beside her, and is planning to reach out to each of them to warn them about Parkinson’s disease.
She'll tell them: “Hey, look, you know, I have Parkinson's, and I just want you to be aware that we did pack a lot of chemicals in Antarctica. And if you think you have any kind of symptoms or things like that, please go and get checked.”
She wants other veterans to know they are not alone. She has advice to current soldiers, too: Stand up to your superiors if an activity feels as if it may not be safe.
“You have to go about making sure that you're protected,” she said. “If they're telling you to do something or get exposed to something, question it.”
This story is part of Poisoned Pathways, an investigation into chemical exposure and Parkinson’s disease supported by the Pulitzer Center and reported by the WUFT Environment & Ag Desk at the UF College of Journalism and Communications.
