Considering the therapeutic effects of the sulphate ion in arresting the TSE disease process in scrapie affected cell cultures (5), the sixteen fold raised level of sulphate in the CJD-free water supplies in relation to CJD endemic supplies is interesting.
The concentration of metals in Pine needles serves as a sound yardstick for assessing the levels of metal contamination of ecosystems (67); particularly relevant when assessing the levels of atmospheric metal particulates.
Interestingly, samples of needles collected across a five acre stand of pine trees around CJD endemic Zuberec yielded 951 mg/kg of Mn, whilst a similar collection of needles sampled across the CJD-free region of Poprad yielded only 59 mg/kg of Mn.
Investigation of the environments around the CJD foci for potentially unique sources of atmospheric Mn contamination identified the presence of two large ferromanganese factories sited in the Orava valley at Siroka and Istebne along the North Western boundary of the Northern CJD focus, and the presence of a glass factory (64) (Mn is employed in the glass making process
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(4)) in Poltar in the Souther CJD foci. Some of the CJD victims had been employed in these factories for varying periods of their working lives. So people working at or living downwind of these factories would have been exposed to significant levels of airborn manganese and silicates in both the Northern and Southern CJD foci.
The factories were originally constructed during the communist era at a time when scant resources were channelled into curtailing chimney emissions of toxic pollutants. Emissions from these factories are locally renowned to form clouds of 'Smog' which travel up the valleys in a Southerly/Easterly direction for several kilometres - precisely over the communities where CJD has erupted. Public fears of atmospheric pollution with manganese dioxide, nickel and other metal compounds downwind of these factories, prompted a study by the Dolny Kubin Health Institute (71) where the hair of children were analyses for metals in the towns of Dolny Kubin (in the Orava CJD cluster region) and Oravska Lesna (outside of the CJD endemic region).
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