For your information, here are scans of the MCS brochure from the Environmental Health Clinic at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, Ontario. Note that they see mostly patients with milder to middling MCS/ES (and there’s usually a 6-12 month wait list), as those with more severe MCS/ES are unable to access the clinic, it being in a regular hospital with hand sanitizers, hundreds of toxic people and plenty of unsafe materials everywhere.
The brochure is an introduction, and reducing exposures is always a good thing, but sometimes people with MCS/ES need to eliminate exposures to remain at all functional, and that’s where things become a lot more complicated, and why we need the OCEEH.
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From their ES MCS Status Report from June of 2011:
“Delegitimizing those with ES-MCS, who may be warning us all of the need for toxics reduction, also tends to impede development of practical, precautionary, potentially preventive and cost-saving public health strategies.”
http://www.womenscollegehospital.ca/assets/legacy/wch/pdfs/ESMCSStatusReportJune22011.pdf
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UPDATED:
Here is a PDF scan of the brochure:
Seriously "Sensitive" to Pollution 
Here’s another MCS brochure (it’s listed in the sidebar too) from the Bureau of Environmental Health
Massachusetts Department of Public Health
Click to access faq-multiple-chemical-sensitivity.pdf
Wouldn’t it be great if next May we wouldn’t have to bring awareness to MCS because we humans stopped pouring toxic chemicals into the environment.
Wouldn’t it be… Here’s hoping we reach a critical mass of understanding (not more chemically injured, although we are getting there too).
I was contemplating posting something from 1985 today, but decided against it…
Maybe I still will sometime this month, for the historians among us…?
It is always interesting to see how far we’ve come or regressed in 30 years. I was thinking I should start keeping track of the people I meet who tell me they can’t breathe from perfume or got sick (from chemicals) while visiting someone at a hospital or are chemically sensitive…. I don’t meet many people being disabled but it seems like at least half have an issue or know someone who does.
I think everyone knows someone who has adverse reactions to chemicals now (if they don’t themselves) only they haven’t put it together to call it MCS or any other condition. It’s still at the “these products don’t agree with me” stage, like I had as a teen, thinking that was “normal”.
I know a few people who describe very serious reactions and still won’t call it MCS or go to a doctor.
I’ve heard that too, in local fb groups. But I’ve also seen people say that their doctors just advise them to rotate products instead of eliminating them, or subscribe pills that cause more problems.
The medical establishment is for the most part, completely clueless when it comes to environmental health matters.
I’ve had MCS for decades. How long does it take for the medical profession to become educated?
“Despite the entertaining educational soiree with my colleagues, I wondered whether industry-sponsored medical education was the best means to keep physicians apprised of emerging scientific information. If this approach to knowledge translation and the historical pendulum from research to clinical practice continue, we can expect it will take the usual 1 to 2 generations before health practitioners are familiar with the documented pathophysiological mechanisms and restorative approach to many cases of multimorbidity. If so, countless individuals with apparently inexplicable multisystem complaints will needlessly suffer and receive an incorrect label of being psychiatrically disordered. By the end of the evening, 3 things were evident: that the pandemic of idiopathic multimorbidity was real, that health care costs were escalating, and that the share price of antidepressant manufacturers would likely continue north for years to come.”
~ Dr Stephen J. Genuis
June 2014 edition of the Canadian Family Physician journal
http://www.cfp.ca/content/60/6/511
Well we’ve already gone through one generation since MCS has been acknowledged (notice I did not see) accepted — we should be there soon. I know we have a ways to go. I wonder how many medical journals are publishing about MCS/EI?
Chemical and environmental “sensitivities” were first diagnosed by Randolph in the 50’s, I think (it was a long time ago that I read one of his books, pre internet, and I don’t remember the details), so more than a generation.
There have been articles in nursing journals. A few in other medical journals too.
Lots of research posted in the RESEARCH tab at the top here
Amazing that it has been 50 years and we keep creating more toxic chemicals and advertisers tell us we need multiple scents to be happy. As a race we are definitely slow learners.
Being drugged and poisoned has a tendency to do that to people…
How can I print my own copy of this brochure (MCS) from the Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, ON?
Someone is creating a better quality scan and turning it into a PDF file for me over the next few days and I will provide it here when I have it. You’d be able to download it and either print it from your computer or take it to a copy shop on a disc (or whatever is used these days).
I don’t really know how the quality would be, but the information would all be there.
The clinic may also send out copies if asked. I haven’t asked.
Where do seriously effected MCS patients go for help if this clinic only sees mild to moderate cases?
I think I was a bit unclear there, sorry. They will see more severely affected people, it’s just that sometimes the exposures and aftermath cost to us is too great, and recovery too difficult if we don’t have the supports to help us during that time.
Note also that the clinic is a diagnostic clinic, not for ongoing personal health support, although they do support your family doctor in some way.
Which is why it is so important to develop the OCEEH.
FYI The Environmental Health clinic is not currently located in the Women’s College Hospital. It is in an office building around the corner. The current address is listed on their website.
Thanks Cheryl, I wasn’t aware of that.
Unless it is a freestanding clinic with it’s own entrance from the street, one that does not share any hallways, or air with other facilities, it will still be problematic for people with more severe MCS/ES.
Here is the website:
http://www.womenscollegehospital.ca/programs-and-services/environmental-health-clinic/
I’ve updated the post to include a PDF scan of the brochure that was made for us.
Are they copyright free and free to be used anywhere? Ie on websites?
Thanks
This I do not know. I am pretty sure that a scan of a document they give out is ok to share with people who have no other means of accessing it. I think you could get a better scan – this was all I could get sent to me after becoming aware of it. I don’t have the original brochure or a scanner. There’s a possibility if you asked them at the clinic that they would be delighted if you ordered a box full from them.
Would you be interested in doing a guest blog for actioncind.org and/or may12th.org?
Unfortunately my brain doesn’t work on command, nor does it come up with articles for others that take different kinds of audiences into consideration either. I’ve been excluded from the social and physical world for far too long, and have been forced into survival mode with severe MCS/ES due to a lack of access to needed supports.
Quite frankly, during this period of extended isolation (except for being online) while extremely ill and in need of help that has been next to non-existent (aside from keeping me barely alive), I have lost patience with the world protecting products and profits over people, as if things deserved the same consideration as living beings do. And my research has led me to uncover things most people do not seem willing to accept at this time.
My long term lack of human connections means I am not a good bridge to introduce concepts more nuanced than “everyday poisons kill and they will kill all life on earth within a very few generations if we don’t change what we do and use now”. People are addicted to some of these poisons and those things cover up other problems.
I personally am running out of time to be subtle about all this, and I see evidence of over 50% of children now having chronic health problems, with easily seen (by some of us) causes and effects, so I am not being alarmist.
I could however maybe do an interview with someone and answer more directed and simple questions from someone who still has connections with the so-called real world where real humans walk around discussing the latest tv shows and movies, buying single use plastic junk, using copious amounts of toxic fragranced products, walking around glued to wireless radiation emitting devices, someone who knows what the outside world can relate to… instead of just being in the cyber world with people trying to survive and / or protect life, and where relationships are very different.
I’ve babbled, but that’s what some exposures do. Short answer is I could do an interview, or maybe you can choose something I’ve already written and ask me about using that?