Environmental hazards and climate change: Unmasking Parkinson's hidden enemies

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a multifactorial neurodegenerative disorder shaped by interactions between genetic susceptibility, environmental exposures, and broader ecological change. Although pesticides, industrial solvents, heavy metals, and air pollutants have long been implicated as potentially modifiable PD risk factors, climate change is now reshaping and amplifying these hazards through rising temperatures, worsening air quality, increased pesticide demand, extreme weather events, and wildfire-related particulate matter.

This narrative review moves beyond a conventional exposure-based summary by integrating environmental toxicology, climate science, epidemiology, and mechanistic neuroscience to reframe PD risk within the context of planetary health. We summarize evidence linking major environmental hazards to PD pathogenesis, emphasizing convergent mechanisms such as oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, impaired proteostasis, neuroinflammation, blood–brain barrier disruption, and α-synuclein aggregation. We further discuss how climate-related changes may intensify these pathways and disproportionately affect vulnerable populations, including agricultural workers, older adults, socioeconomically disadvantaged communities, and individuals living in rapidly industrializing or climate-sensitive regions. Importantly, we highlight clinical and public health implications by proposing that structured environmental and occupational exposure assessment should be incorporated into PD risk evaluation, early recognition, preventive counseling, and research design. We also discuss exposure reduction, workplace protection, environmental monitoring, and regulatory policy as prevention-oriented strategies. By positioning environmental hazards and climate change as interconnected, underrecognized, and potentially modifiable contributors to PD, this review provides a framework for clinicians, researchers, and policymakers seeking to reduce the future global burden of neurodegenerative disease.