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Pesticides linked to rare disease among soccer players

“Other sports are played on grass, involve head trauma and have doping, so why don’t we see the disease there?”

— Paolo Zeppillo, researcher

The deaths of a growing number of Italian soccer players from a rare and debilitating disease may be due to pesticides and fertilizers used on soccer pitches in the 1980s and 1990s, an Italian magistrate said.

Fifty-one professional and amateur players have now died from it, six times the average in the general population, said Turin Magistrate Raffaele Guariniello, who has run checks on every man who played in the top three divisions from the 1960s to 2006.

Last night, Roberto Baggio, Ruud Gullit and Franco Baresi were to play a charity game in Florence organized by the latest sufferer, the former Milan, Fiorentina and Italy striker Stefano Borgonovo, 44.

Now paralyzed and speaking with a computer-generated voice, Borgonovo is raising funds for research into the nerve-wasting condition known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or more commonly Lou Gehrig’s disease, after the US baseball player who died of it in 1941.

“I want to find the penicillin of 2008,” said Borgonovo, who scored the goal that put Milan into the 1990 European Cup final.

In Turin investigators have identified heading the ball as well as doping, including the use of legal anti-inflammatory drugs, as possible triggers for the disease among the soccer players, typically those who played for more than five seasons in Italy during the 1980s and 1990s.

But Guariniello said the fertilizers used to treat pitches were also in the spotlight.

“We are interviewing retired groundsmen and analyzing chemicals they used, including those containing formaldehyde,” he said. “There could be a connection with the incidence of this disease among agricultural workers.”

Further research is to be carried out by a group led by Paolo Zeppillo, a former doctor to the Italy team, who will be given funding of 150,000 euros (US$203,460) by the soccer federation.

“We shall be looking at a genetic predisposition among sufferers, set off by something in soccer, although I have doubts about current theories,” he said. “Other sports are played on grass, involve head trauma and have doping, so why don’t we see the disease there?”

As research continues, the disease is cutting a swath through a generation of players, including the former Genoa captain Gianluca Signorini and former Como midfielder Adriano Lombardi, leaving last night’s players wondering if they were raising money to fight an illness that will one day take them.

“We need to find out about this,” said Celeste Pin, Borgonovo’s former room-mate at Fiorentina.

“It is striking down soccer players, which does not leave you feeling very serene,” Pin said.

Magistrates have also looked into the high number of Fiorentina players suffering tumors and heart attacks, amid suspicions that performance-enhancing drugs may have had an influence.

“Our survey shows a higher than average rate of thyroid, colon, pancreatic and liver cancers among soccer players generally,” Guariniello said.

But Lou Gehrig’s disease remains the most serious affliction, he said, adding that he hoped help would come from other countries, particularly the UK.
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