More Than Buildings Make Us Ill

by Molly Ivins, Columnist, Ft. Worth Star-Telegram

Reprinted in The Toledo Blade, Sunday, October 4, 1998

yellow italicized inserts by The WebMaestrae

Austin, TX - Let's talk peanut butter and jelly. According to an account in the New York Times, more schools are banning peanut butter because peanut allergies are apparently on the rise. In rare cases, the allergy is so severe that it can kill, although there is an antidote.

Quite likens the latest craze in breast removal to avoid breast cancer... like cutting off one's head to avoid a headache. Schools are notorious for bad air quality. What they need to ban is the air, not the peanut butter and jelly! Allergies across the board are reportedly on the rise. Asthma is one of the most misdiagnosed health issues from toxic air quality, as are learning disabilities and other behavior problems, et al. The bottom line... the elusive obvious: immediately breathable air quality, especially from compounds one never smells. Funds spent on taking the smell out of toxic materials alone would cover development of safer products. Total body burden finally hits critical mass and reactions to the next immediate body burden elicit a noticeable reaction. However, the damage is usually done silently, gradually, imperceptibly over a long period of time. Accumulation re: short-term, long-term, plain and simple exposure and finally overexposure to synthetic chemicals in the air et al from our immediate environment is key. Humans are the only creatures on the planet who build their homes, workspaces and educational facilities with toxic building materials. The additional industrial pollutants and those found in food, water, and other materials are just frosting on the cake.

Asthma and allergies are the Rodney Dangerfields of disease - unless you happen to have them. One trouble with allergies is that their cause is hard to pin down. A bewildering variety of natural substances cause allergic reactions.

Once the specific body parts are 'toxed out,' the 'allergic reactions' start to surface. Until then, the damage is silent but deadly. Chemicals shoot straight to the brain from the olfactory first. The lungs pump these hazardous compounds throughout the entire body via the bloodstream. Chemicals accumulate and are usually stored in organs, fat, and/or whatever cells the body intelligence chooses to harbour them for safe keeping if for whatever reason they cannot be eliminated. Various organs and other body parts will take the hit to spare the whole in order of their immediate usefulness to basic survival. Reference pain elsewhere from internal organ damage is common and leads to the gamut of misdiagnosis.

Something called Multiple Chemical Sensitivity [MCS] afflicts between 37 million and 75 million people who report that they are sensitive or allergic to common substances, such as detergents, perfumes, solvents, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and foods.

It's not until total body burden hits critical mass, that one becomes a 'Universal Reactor,' a term as coined in the MCS community when one finally starts reacting to everything, including electromagnetic and other fields and radiations. The numbers are low because the bulk of the people suffering from the onslaught have not connected the cause or are totally oblivious that they are reacting/suffering. An immediate family member is a perfect example of the usual male denial of personal harm from these toxic compounds who died anyway from asbestosis at only 48 years of age after only a 6 month illness while we all literally stood by stupefied and watched him suffocate to death. Yet! 'It' didn't bother him... whatever 'it' happened to be any any given time. The entire wing at the hospital was reserved by said company and filled with terminal employees... all male. No, maybe some people don't 'feel' or 'notice' any 'immediate' effects. I guess 'we' are the lucky ones... the ones who do notice immediate effects... who feel The Burn... so we can attend the issues more quickly... IF we can. However, these lethal compounds 'get us all' anyway. The bottom line on the headcount from global sources is a relative 1 in 4 who react more immediately, men, women, or children... an interesting biochemical assessment from our perspective. The bottom line in the biospheric domain is simply the rise in industrial et al pollution in general. Our Toxic Times additionally reports in the October 1998 issue: "Medications such as antibiotics, hormones, painkillers, tranquilizers, and chemotherapy drugs can now be measured in surface water, groundwater, and tap water. These medications are getting into the water supply from flushing toilets and from the use of manure and sewage sludge." [from "Drugs in the Water," Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly #614, 9/3/98] And most importantly, "In 1995, 70% of the 70,000 chemicals in commercial use had NEVER been tested for human health effects."

Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly, a valuable newsletter that usually addresses graver consequences of pollution, reported in February that many people react so strongly that they become disabled from very low exposure to common substances.

Because these 'common substances' are potentially lethal, have never been tested, and corporate is counting on the delay and adaptability of the human organism to belligerently continue to market these lethal 'common substances'. The pollution issue is more than grave. The chemical injury issue echoes. Having gone thru C/I several times now due to not having been able to get out of the immediate, toxic environment long enough, [new construction & remodeling], having been lied to point blank incessantly, and coerced with brute force and ignorance, I can attest to the gravity of the situation. People start reacting strongly after [usually] sufficient exposure; long-term, short term, high-level, low-level, what have you. It's all going to get you in the end, so don't kid yourself. Denial leads down the same path as awareness, eventually. Prior to strong reactions, the body gradually accumulates toxicity and damage from the exposure. One may not notice it until damage is finally bad enough, however, accumulation continues. They say you pay with what you earn, bad is better than The Burn.

Practically anything can be blamed on MCS. It sounds like a hypochondriac heaven, which makes it easy to dismiss. But Rachel's reports: "MCS has been recognized by its symptoms for 50 years... However, because MCS sufferers react to chemicals at levels that are hundreds or thousands of times lower than allowable occupational exposures, traditional toxicology dictates that their symptoms cannot be caused by chemical exposure... In sum, because MCS does not fit any of the three currently accepted mechanisms of disease - infectious, immune system, or cancer - traditional medicine has not known how to explain MCS, and so has often labeled it 'psychogenic' - originating in the patient's mind."

'Allowable occupational exposures.' The term is quite obviously self-explanatory with it's key word 'occupational.' Most corporations would rather fight than switch to safer workspaces, methods, and products. Corporate brainwashing has so fixed the acceptability of hazardous chemicals in our global mindsets it's difficult to think otherwise. However, knowing that most chemicals on the market today have NOT been tested, and even if they had been, any one party's immediate mix will cause a different reaction due to the chemical combustion of the varying compounds collected in the body. Reviewing the timeline, 50-60 years ago is just about the time the 'better living thru chemistry' campaign hit the public domain coincidentally paralleling Multiple Chemical Sensitivity... and it's NOT sensitivity... it's blatant Chemical Injury... simply because most of the substances truly are hazardous and only the brainwashing has made it not so. There is NOTHING wrong with the sufferer as heretofore propagized other than the fact that he/she happened to be in the 'wrong place at the wrong time too long.' Some people just show signs before others, or are more aware that they are suffering, or more accurately they don't react to substances 100 to 1000 times lower, they've simply unknowingly already gradually accumulated and hit their maxq. But we're all headed in the same direction because corporate would rather spend more money to fight for the status quo than spend half as much changing their formulas and/or facilities... a typical male response to a perceived threat. Anywhere you find the word 'traditional' you know you're dealing with 'The System' Allowable limits are way too high because manufacturing/industry up to this point did not build their facilities with safety levels in mind. They feel it's 'too expensive' to change now. Innocent though it may have been 50-60 years ago, remedial measures are still just 'too costly' for The Board to approve. MCS, or more accurately as has been reiterated in many pages herein, Chemical Injury, does not fit into any of the 'accepted' medical paradigms, i.e.: infectious, immune system or cancer, because it again takes it's place in the illusive obvious realm of the larger context. It causes them.

The first time MCS came to public attention here was in 1987, when the Environmental Protection Agency remodeled its office space at the Watergate Mall, causing about 200 employees to develop "sick building syndrome." The National Research Council now accepts that sick building syndrome is a real phenomenon, and several dozen EPA employees later reported developing MCS.

It's not the building that's sick. Anything doctors don't understand or won't/can't acknowledge because of threats from the powers that be gets logged under the 'syndrome' category. How convenient. A recent visit to another government establishment that was recently remodeled found the same. One woman had to leave immediately and other employees, both men and women but most severely the women, were suffering horribly. We were in the office just a few minutes before the thick toxic fumage drove us away. It's not just women anymore. It's men and women... and worst of all... children. Building and refurbishing materials are among some of the most hazardous in anyone's immediate environment. Every party we've come in contact with who's remodeled or moved into new construction has had health hazards though most of them would never admit, for whatever reason, that the building/house had anything to do with it. Go figure. It's been decades now since lumber manufacturers started chemically drying wood products instead of kiln drying and adding other preservatives, lethal glues and formaldehydes in lumber, chipboard, particle board and ply. If one were to measure one's immediate air quality one would be quite alarmed. Now read the MSDS on all the chemicals found in your arena, trace them back to the materials and fit your health issues to the crime. One never knows exactly what any specific 'mix' will do because the offenders themselves have not been tested, for the most part, of themselves, and certainly not in combinations. It's not the 'buildings' that are sick, it's the people, flora and fauna. See inthenwz.html for the headlines.

Meanwhile, the chemical companies are dismissing all this as "junk science." They have funded their own research group: the Environmental Sensitivities Research Institute.

And are fighting tooth and nail. What isn't clear about it is why they think they/their families are not being affected. No amount of money can buy health and one is totally at loss on this planet without a physical body, or didn't they notice.

As Rachel's also points out, "The stakes are enormous, and the chemical industry knows it. If a clearly defined disease emerges from research of MCS, with chemical causes that are understood, then it can't be too many decades before chemical corporations will have to face liability and compensation claims from millions of citizens harmed by their products."

Yes, the stakes are enormous. Chemical industrialists have known the hazards for years but their greed as well as chemical overexposure has clouded their behavior. They grow into incomprehensible wealth while the populace and planet suffer. The situation is far more grave than John Q. Public could ever imagine. Conspiracies and contracts abound. The situation is already 'clearly defined.' It's plain and simple chemical exposure. Short-term, long-term, high-level, low-level... whatever the mix. One of our personal experiences with Premier Coating out of Elk Grove City, IL found months of the usual stall tactics in P.R. interaction until they had finally succeeded in running out the two-year statute of limitations re: product liability, then said: "Go take a hike," to put it appropriately for internet display. It's happened again and again since in taking a stand and attempting to bring these Perpetrators to task. Never expect any of these Perpetrators to do the right thing. One has to have a battery of attorneys and sufficient funding to fight it, and who can match those odds? The Perpetrators are making the rules. Retailers, the workforce, and the 'traditional medical community' follow suit due to the almighty economic trap. It has to stop. "Decades" won't do it. It has to happen NOW. Survival across the board is critically at stake.

Rachel's recommends the book "Chemical Exposures: Low Levels and High Stakes" by Nicholas Ashford and Claudia Miller as a lucid and thoughtful account of the science and medicine on MCS.

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