WUFT | News and public media for north central Florida
Rural Risk
By Katie Shealy
April 29, 2026 at 11:50 PM EDT
Rural communities are at greater risk of Parkinson’s disease. Researchers say that pesticide exposure and contaminated well water increase that risk.
Nevada, Missouri
Growing up in rural Missouri, Jason Marquardt knew how to stay busy. If he wasn’t helping his dad and grandmother out on the family cattle ranch, he was down by Lake Marquardt, catching fish for dinner.
As soon as Marquardt chucked his bait into the 10-acre lake, a blue gill, largemouth bass or catfish would hit. A fish dinner was such a sure thing that most nights, his grandmother and father were already in the farmhouse cooking up the sides. The only downside of fishing in Lake Marquardt was that it was covered in thick, sludgy algae. He had to take care while casting to make sure his line didn’t get tangled.
The Marquardts never knew the cause of the algae until a University of Missouri researcher informed them that hundreds of acres of soybean and corn rows drained into the low-lying lake, funneling pesticides and other agricultural chemicals into their fishing spot. The family also drew drinking water from a shallow aquifer where the pesticides likely seeped.
Harrisville, Michigan
At 4:30 a.m. most days in springtime, Thomas McIntyre threw on an old short-sleeved shirt and jeans and got to work on his family’s farm bringing the cows in for milking. Once he finished with the cows, he grabbed a quick breakfast and was back to work by 9 a.m. hand-mixing and spraying weedkiller and insecticides across rows of corn.
McIntyre didn’t bother to fuss over wearing any gloves or other protective gear as he went about his daily chores—it would only slow him down.
Williams Bay, Wisconsin
From the age of 26 to 32, Marcia Barber was surrounded by nothing but fields of corn and soybean. Barber was friends with a nearby farmer who needed help harvesting his crops, and she was in need of some extra spending money. So for six summers she donned her leather work gloves and blue jeans to wade through rows of sweet corn, picking ears as she went.
The corn stalks bit at her jeans and her long-sleeved shirt was filthy and soaked through in a mixture of morning dew, pesticides and herbicides the farmer had sprayed pre-harvest. Once she got home, she pulled the soiled clothes off at the door and took a shower with water from her private well.
Visalia, California
For 17 years, Elizabeth Serrano was her grandfather’s sidekick. She grew up on his 20-acre olive grove, and that meant she got put to work. Serrano’s job was to load pesticides into a tank and spray them up and down the groves.
By the end of most days, she was drenched in whatever chemical they were spraying. With the sun beaming down and the feeling of sticky sweat mixed with chemicals soaking into her skin, she’d make her way to the water hose to drink water from their private well before heading inside.
By the time she reached her 20s, symptoms of Parkinson’s disease had already started popping up. Her body stopped cooperating with her.
A common thread
These Americans living with Parkinson’s disease grew up in different parts of the United States, but they are united by a common thread. They all grew up in rural communities surrounded by farmland, were exposed to pesticides and drank from private wells during their youth.
Dr. Brian Copeland, associate professor of neurology at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, said Parkinson’s is associated with environmental factors magnified by living in rural areas.
LSU movement-disorder specialist Dr. Brian Copeland meets with Parkinson’s patients for a Q&A at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans. (Maria Avlonitis/WUFT News) (6000x4000, AR: 1.5)
“The three things that have popped out of epidemiological studies for years,” Copeland said, “are living in a rural environment, being exposed to pesticides or herbicides and drinking well water.”
Rural living
Increasing scientific evidence shows that people living in rural areas have higher rates of Parkinson’s disease. While farmers have a higher risk of developing Parkinson’s because of their occupation and pesticide exposure, non-farmers living in rural America can also be exposed to dangerous chemicals through well water.
“If you think about it, all three of those things go together. Rural environments tend to be more farmland, so you have more herbicides and pesticides,” Copeland said. “Well, where does that run off to? That runs off to your well water sources.”
Marquardt grew up in a small town of around 9,000 people in Missouri where the main employment was farming, a local hospital and a company.
His grandmother and father lived on the farm most of their lives and were both diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Now Marquardt is living with the disease too. Yet he has no inherited genetic factors that would have caused the disease, according to his doctors.
Marquardt believes that his Parkinson’s stems from a combination of environmental factors he was exposed to while living in a rural area surrounded by farmland and drinking water from a private well. When he received his diagnosis he was floored.
“You get kicked in the gut,” Marquardt said. “Unfortunately, I saw what my father went through. That was bad.”
According to a 2026 study, long-term, consistent exposure to pesticides can increase the risk of Parkinson’s disease in rural communities and agricultural workers. Findings suggest that exposures occurring two to three decades prior to diagnosis have a stronger association with disease risk, which points to a window of increased vulnerability during youth when the brain is developing.
McIntyre spent every spring from age 12 to 16 mixing and occasionally spraying fields of crops with pesticides and insecticides. He would mix the chemicals in plastic vats and spray them out of a trailer behind a big green John Deere tractor until dusk.
Moving at around 8-10 mph, McIntyre spent those days breathing in pesticides with no personal protective equipment. He didn’t think all the extra precautions were necessary.
“We’re talking about raw farmers who were just doing things,” said McIntyre. “I’d wear a short-sleeved shirt, so I got my farmer's tan.”
Similarly, Serrano helped her family mix chemicals and spray their olive groves. She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in her mid 20’s and believes pesticides played a big part.
“I ended up soaked with whatever chemical it was,” said Serrano. “With all the chemicals we sprayed, we absorbed it through our skin. We drank it without realizing it.”
While farmers and pesticide applicators face a more direct threat of exposure, people living in rural communities are also vulnerable to drift of chemicals sprayed in agriculture.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, pesticide drift can pose health risks when the spray is carried by the wind to other areas, including nearby homes, schools and playgrounds. Still, U.S. crop dusters can spray pesticides, including paraquat that has been linked to risk of Parkinson’s, though under stricter regulations than in the past.
"I was exposed to it every day": Parkinson's risk and rural living
Well water
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles found that consuming well water increases the relative risk of developing Parkinson’s disease by 70 to 90%. The percentage depends on the type and amount of pesticides in the water.
The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 was passed to protect the public from contaminated water supplies, but private wells in the U.S. are typically not monitored frequently and are not held to the same regulatory standard as public systems.
Private wells can range from shallow systems as little as 10 to 50 feet deep to deeper drilled wells. Rural communities are more likely than urban communities to rely on private wells due to limited centralized water infrastructure. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in 5 sampled private wells contain at least one chemical at levels that could impact human health.
Serrano grew up drinking well water and believes that the chemicals they sprayed on the olive groves seeped into the well, and she drank it without realizing.
“As a kid, you don’t think about any of that stuff,” said Serrano. “You’re drinking out of the garden hose and it’s on a well. Any chemicals eventually soak into that.”
A complex disease
While living in a rural community, pesticide exposure and drinking contaminated well water may increase your risk of Parkinson’s, exposure to one or all these environmental factors does not mean that you will get the disease.
According to neurology professor Caroline Tanner at the University of California San Francisco Weill Institute for Neurosciences, Parkinson’s is a complex disease, meaning there’s more than one factor that contributes to developing it.
Dr. Caroline Tanner studies the environmental causes of Parkinson’s disease. (Courtesy of Caroline Tanner) (4387x4388, AR: 0.9997721057429353)
Barber, the woman who picked sweet corn in Wisconsin, has no family history of Parkinson’s disease and does not carry any of the genes associated with the disease, according to testing, yet she developed Parkinson’s. She lived in the same house, worked in the same cornfields and drank from the same private well as her housemate for six years, but her housemate never developed Parkinson’s.
Tanner explained that some people may have major genes associated with Parkinson’s, predisposing them to the disease.
“Even then, it’s not enough to tip the balance,” said Tanner. “Other things have to happen.”
Some of those things include exposure to pesticides, chemicals and solvents in the water. Factors like a healthy diet and exercise can counteract some of those exposures, which could lower the risk of developing the disease.
“All of those things sum up together,” Tanner said, “to decide whether you're going to end up here getting Parkinson's or here not getting 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.
(3125x313, AR: 9.984025559105431)
Growing up in rural Missouri, Jason Marquardt knew how to stay busy. If he wasn’t helping his dad and grandmother out on the family cattle ranch, he was down by Lake Marquardt, catching fish for dinner.
As soon as Marquardt chucked his bait into the 10-acre lake, a blue gill, largemouth bass or catfish would hit. A fish dinner was such a sure thing that most nights, his grandmother and father were already in the farmhouse cooking up the sides. The only downside of fishing in Lake Marquardt was that it was covered in thick, sludgy algae. He had to take care while casting to make sure his line didn’t get tangled.
The Marquardts never knew the cause of the algae until a University of Missouri researcher informed them that hundreds of acres of soybean and corn rows drained into the low-lying lake, funneling pesticides and other agricultural chemicals into their fishing spot. The family also drew drinking water from a shallow aquifer where the pesticides likely seeped.
Harrisville, Michigan
At 4:30 a.m. most days in springtime, Thomas McIntyre threw on an old short-sleeved shirt and jeans and got to work on his family’s farm bringing the cows in for milking. Once he finished with the cows, he grabbed a quick breakfast and was back to work by 9 a.m. hand-mixing and spraying weedkiller and insecticides across rows of corn.
McIntyre didn’t bother to fuss over wearing any gloves or other protective gear as he went about his daily chores—it would only slow him down.
Williams Bay, Wisconsin
From the age of 26 to 32, Marcia Barber was surrounded by nothing but fields of corn and soybean. Barber was friends with a nearby farmer who needed help harvesting his crops, and she was in need of some extra spending money. So for six summers she donned her leather work gloves and blue jeans to wade through rows of sweet corn, picking ears as she went.
The corn stalks bit at her jeans and her long-sleeved shirt was filthy and soaked through in a mixture of morning dew, pesticides and herbicides the farmer had sprayed pre-harvest. Once she got home, she pulled the soiled clothes off at the door and took a shower with water from her private well.
Visalia, California
For 17 years, Elizabeth Serrano was her grandfather’s sidekick. She grew up on his 20-acre olive grove, and that meant she got put to work. Serrano’s job was to load pesticides into a tank and spray them up and down the groves.
By the end of most days, she was drenched in whatever chemical they were spraying. With the sun beaming down and the feeling of sticky sweat mixed with chemicals soaking into her skin, she’d make her way to the water hose to drink water from their private well before heading inside.
By the time she reached her 20s, symptoms of Parkinson’s disease had already started popping up. Her body stopped cooperating with her.
A common thread
These Americans living with Parkinson’s disease grew up in different parts of the United States, but they are united by a common thread. They all grew up in rural communities surrounded by farmland, were exposed to pesticides and drank from private wells during their youth.
Dr. Brian Copeland, associate professor of neurology at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, said Parkinson’s is associated with environmental factors magnified by living in rural areas.
LSU movement-disorder specialist Dr. Brian Copeland meets with Parkinson’s patients for a Q&A at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans. (Maria Avlonitis/WUFT News) (6000x4000, AR: 1.5)
“The three things that have popped out of epidemiological studies for years,” Copeland said, “are living in a rural environment, being exposed to pesticides or herbicides and drinking well water.”
Rural living
Increasing scientific evidence shows that people living in rural areas have higher rates of Parkinson’s disease. While farmers have a higher risk of developing Parkinson’s because of their occupation and pesticide exposure, non-farmers living in rural America can also be exposed to dangerous chemicals through well water.
“If you think about it, all three of those things go together. Rural environments tend to be more farmland, so you have more herbicides and pesticides,” Copeland said. “Well, where does that run off to? That runs off to your well water sources.”
Marquardt grew up in a small town of around 9,000 people in Missouri where the main employment was farming, a local hospital and a company.
His grandmother and father lived on the farm most of their lives and were both diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Now Marquardt is living with the disease too. Yet he has no inherited genetic factors that would have caused the disease, according to his doctors.
Marquardt believes that his Parkinson’s stems from a combination of environmental factors he was exposed to while living in a rural area surrounded by farmland and drinking water from a private well. When he received his diagnosis he was floored.
“You get kicked in the gut,” Marquardt said. “Unfortunately, I saw what my father went through. That was bad.”
According to a 2026 study, long-term, consistent exposure to pesticides can increase the risk of Parkinson’s disease in rural communities and agricultural workers. Findings suggest that exposures occurring two to three decades prior to diagnosis have a stronger association with disease risk, which points to a window of increased vulnerability during youth when the brain is developing.
McIntyre spent every spring from age 12 to 16 mixing and occasionally spraying fields of crops with pesticides and insecticides. He would mix the chemicals in plastic vats and spray them out of a trailer behind a big green John Deere tractor until dusk.
Moving at around 8-10 mph, McIntyre spent those days breathing in pesticides with no personal protective equipment. He didn’t think all the extra precautions were necessary.
“We’re talking about raw farmers who were just doing things,” said McIntyre. “I’d wear a short-sleeved shirt, so I got my farmer's tan.”
Similarly, Serrano helped her family mix chemicals and spray their olive groves. She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in her mid 20’s and believes pesticides played a big part.
“I ended up soaked with whatever chemical it was,” said Serrano. “With all the chemicals we sprayed, we absorbed it through our skin. We drank it without realizing it.”
While farmers and pesticide applicators face a more direct threat of exposure, people living in rural communities are also vulnerable to drift of chemicals sprayed in agriculture.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, pesticide drift can pose health risks when the spray is carried by the wind to other areas, including nearby homes, schools and playgrounds. Still, U.S. crop dusters can spray pesticides, including paraquat that has been linked to risk of Parkinson’s, though under stricter regulations than in the past.
"I was exposed to it every day": Parkinson's risk and rural living
Well water
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles found that consuming well water increases the relative risk of developing Parkinson’s disease by 70 to 90%. The percentage depends on the type and amount of pesticides in the water.
The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 was passed to protect the public from contaminated water supplies, but private wells in the U.S. are typically not monitored frequently and are not held to the same regulatory standard as public systems.
Private wells can range from shallow systems as little as 10 to 50 feet deep to deeper drilled wells. Rural communities are more likely than urban communities to rely on private wells due to limited centralized water infrastructure. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in 5 sampled private wells contain at least one chemical at levels that could impact human health.
Serrano grew up drinking well water and believes that the chemicals they sprayed on the olive groves seeped into the well, and she drank it without realizing.
“As a kid, you don’t think about any of that stuff,” said Serrano. “You’re drinking out of the garden hose and it’s on a well. Any chemicals eventually soak into that.”
A complex disease
While living in a rural community, pesticide exposure and drinking contaminated well water may increase your risk of Parkinson’s, exposure to one or all these environmental factors does not mean that you will get the disease.
According to neurology professor Caroline Tanner at the University of California San Francisco Weill Institute for Neurosciences, Parkinson’s is a complex disease, meaning there’s more than one factor that contributes to developing it.
Dr. Caroline Tanner studies the environmental causes of Parkinson’s disease. (Courtesy of Caroline Tanner) (4387x4388, AR: 0.9997721057429353)
Barber, the woman who picked sweet corn in Wisconsin, has no family history of Parkinson’s disease and does not carry any of the genes associated with the disease, according to testing, yet she developed Parkinson’s. She lived in the same house, worked in the same cornfields and drank from the same private well as her housemate for six years, but her housemate never developed Parkinson’s.
Tanner explained that some people may have major genes associated with Parkinson’s, predisposing them to the disease.
“Even then, it’s not enough to tip the balance,” said Tanner. “Other things have to happen.”
Some of those things include exposure to pesticides, chemicals and solvents in the water. Factors like a healthy diet and exercise can counteract some of those exposures, which could lower the risk of developing the disease.
“All of those things sum up together,” Tanner said, “to decide whether you're going to end up here getting Parkinson's or here not getting 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.
(3125x313, AR: 9.984025559105431)