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Testing the permeability of pesticides through protective clothing on a French farm (Photo: Ed Alcock/MYOP for Le Monde)

Feature

Probing for a pesticides link to Parkinson's disease

Testing the permeability of pesticides through protective clothing on a French farm (Photo: Ed Alcock/MYOP for Le Monde)

Jean-Baptiste Lefoulon, a French farmer in Normandy, stands in boxer shorts in the middle of his farmyard. His stripped-down appearance is for a study called Pestexpo, for pesticide exposure, and its purpose is to observe the real-life work conditions of agricultural workers in field crops, greenhouses, apple orchards or vineyards.

Luis Grasa is a 70-year-old who worked all his life as a shepherd and farmer in Huesca, Spain. Eight years ago, Grasa was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease,...

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Author Bio

A longer, French-language, version of this article was published simultaneously in Le Monde today. Other reporters contributed to this story. The cross-border investigation on 'Pesticides at work' is coordinated by Investigative Reporting Denmark, edited by Le Monde and Katharine Quamby, and made in collaboration with journalists from Le Monde in France, Knack in Belgium, Tygodnik Powszechny in Poland, Ostro in Croatia and Slovenia, IRPI in Italy, De Groene Amsterdammer in The Netherlands, Ippen Investigativ in Germany, Marcos Garcia Rey from Spain and The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting in US. The investigation is supported by Journalismfund.eu and IJ4EU.

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