Category Archives: Accessibility

Have Your Say For May by Amy

tilted momAmy from Florida shares this with us:

Q ~ If you could tell the world ONE thing about your life with MCS/ES (or any other invisible disability that has MCS/ES as a symptom), what would it be?

A ~ What I’d really like to tell the world about my life is a full explanation of MCS, such that everyone would understand it enough to prevent, treat and accommodate me and everyone with this illness. That seems like more than I could do even if I had a whole book rather than a blog post. So I will focus my answer on something a bit more manageable.

I would tell the world that the invisible nature of this illness affects me on many levels. Some of the substances I react to are invisible, though they are obviously detected by my body. Some of my symptoms are invisible to others, but are still felt by me and still limit my abilities. Most importantly, the primary survival mechanism of chemical sensitivity is avoidance, which means that I have to avoid public places. Thus, the sicker I am, the more invisible I am to my community. That invisible nature of this illness is the most devastating part for me.


Q ~ How has this one thing affected your life?

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Have Your Say for May by Mimi

Mimi from Ontario, Canada has this to say to us:

I wish that you could accept that this is real and that your habits make me ill.

I wish you could understand how switching to fragrance-free products is such a small act that means a world of difference to me – literally.

It means being able to have a clear mind in order to work effectively and support myself, it means being able to receive hugs, it means not suffering every day.

Mimi

Assistive Devices For People With MCS/ES

For people with MCS/ES, assistive devices can allow us to remain functional, independent, and able when we can’t control everything in our environments.

MCS ES assistive technologySlide with a few options from New MCS/ES Accommodation Resource

In addition to fragrance, chemical, and wireless free policies, these and other devices can help reduce or eliminate exposures to the pollutants that can otherwise completely disable people with MCS/ES. They can make the difference for people to remain employed when provided early enough, effectively minimizing the effects of MCS/ES.

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Are Essential Oils Too Popular For Our Own Good?

Did you know that essential oils are not harmless?

Essential Oils have been, in limited circumstances,  a good thing. Some have useful healing properties when used medicinally in very specific and temporary ways, but too much of anything is not a good thing. Essential oils  are now used and diffused everywhere, and have become more of a serious health hazard than something beneficial. Indeed,  for an ever growing percent of the population they have become life-threatening accessibility barriers.

They can be sensitizers and allergens, and can cause other serious health problems too.
They can emit and create hazardous air pollutants. Some are made with synthetic ingredients, or from pesticided plants, and are processed using toxic solvents.

They are WAY over-used and over-promoted, and any beneficial uses the organic oils may have, risk being lost due to this careless over-use.

They should not be used as a popular way to make money the way they are now.

They should be kept for medicinal use under the guidance of qualified, trained professionals, and  not the MLM (multi-level-marketing) folks who are inventing new ways to use them so that they can sell more product.

Some people have severe adverse reactions to them, and their proliferation is causing new barriers to access, meaning people can’t access food from health food stores,  other essentials, or even alternative health care, because the oils are so prevalent and contaminating everything (1st, 2nd, and 3rd hand) in what should be healthy places with clean, fragrance-free air.

Fore more information, here are a few links to check out: Continue reading

Home Dental Extraction SUCCESS (#2)!

Another One Bit the Dust

I survived my second home extraction on the weekend. It was a very infected tooth, an upper rear molar, one that I had somehow managed to retain a year longer than expected. It was actually the first one to get infected last year, but then the other tooth went ballistic, and by the time that extraction site healed, this tooth had calmed down enough to be very useful for eating with.

In hindsight, waiting so long may not have been such a great idea, as in the end, the infection was nasty. Very nasty. It put me into a terrible funk that was really difficult to push my way through, similar to the depression some kinds of mold can cause, and created the same challenges MCS/ES exposures cause, like brain fog, difficulty thinking and doing things, and a real lack of energy. And it stank when pulled. Really stank.

I am so grateful for the home visiting dentist in this area. Not only is he fragrance-free, but he is willing (and able!) to take other precautions to make things safe for me.

Last year, before my first home extraction, we discussed everything that was needed for the procedure, and what was necessary to make it as safe as possible for me.

This year I couldn’t find my old list (despite seeing it a month or 2 ago) and hoped he remembered his. This is what I do remember, and what we did:

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Wendy is NOT a Widget and She Shouldn’t be Treated Like One

Wendy is NOT a widget. Widgets can go anywhere. Wendy can’t.

“Widget” is used in texts and speech, especially in the context of accounting, to indicate a hypothetical “any-product”. Companies in such texts will frequently be given names such as “ABC Widgets” or “Acme Widget Corp.” to indicate that the particular business of the hypothetical company is not relevant to the topic of discussion.
(Widget economics – wikipedia)

“Economists often use the term widget to refer to an abstract unit of production.”

Wendy is NOT a widget as her local housing authority seems to believe. They have a capacity problem, but instead of addressing the need for improved (and accessible) capacity, they want to re-arrange people’s lives as if they were widgets, with little to no regard or understanding of the consequences.

INVESTOPEDIA EXPLAINS ‘Capacity’

“The widget manufacturer may be able to produce 150,000 widgets in a month. However, due to downtime because of equipment maintenance and worker illness, only about 130,000 widgets can actually be produced per month. Over the long run, a business can increase its capacity and output by acquiring more factors of productions. For example, if market demand for widgets spikes, the widget manufacturer can buy more equipment and hire more workers, and thus increase its capacity to 175,000 widgets per month.”

Wendy is not a widget. She is a living, breathing, human being, a human being with a complex, chronic environmentally linked condition and disability related needs, needs that widgets don’t have.

Wendy Kearly photo by ADAM MACINNIS – THE NEWS

Wendy Kearly photo by ADAM MACINNIS – THE NEWS

The housing authority from which Wendy rents her safe home has deemed her over-housed, and are in the process of evicting her, despite the fact that Wendy has no other option for medically required, safe housing available, and no safe access to any of the other places most people take for granted (see below).

In the following audio interview with Wendy, among other things, she talks about the process her grown children take to detox themselves enough to be able to safely visit with her, so that she is able to safely hug them when they come to town.

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Your Favorite Personal Care and Cleaning Products Went to the Lab, and They Came Back With This

Take a deep breath (or maybe not)

“This study found 156 different VOCs emitted from the 37 products, with an average of 15 VOCs per product. Of these 156 VOCs, 42 VOCs are classified as toxic or hazardous under US federal laws, and each product emitted at least one of these chemicals. Emissions of carcinogenic hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) from green fragranced products were not significantly different from regular fragranced products.”

Most homes are full of these products!!!

Indeed, most indoor environments (and everything in them) are now polluted with these VOCs due to the pervasive nature of these products and chemical compounds.

156 VOCs

From the research article:

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Have Your Say For May

What if you had the chance to say one thing about your life with MCS/ES, and how it would change your life if it was understood?

May is MCS/ES Awareness Month (yet again… maybe some year we won’t need it to be, but this year, we still do), and this year, I would like to share some of your stories and insights.

this one thing

If you could tell the world ONE thing about your life with MCS/ES (or any other invisible disability that has MCS/ES as a symptom), what would it be?

How has this one thing affected your life?

If this one thing were changed, how would your life be different?

You could think of it as a conversation with someone you love, someone who loves you (or even a kind stranger), someone who wants to understand, and who is willing to do something for you, and/or to change the way they do things, in order to include you in life, and to help you with what you need or want to accomplish in life (for example).

This is your time to tell them this one thing, and how this change will impact your life for the better.

Here’s what I am asking for with your submissions: Continue reading

What If an Industry was Allowed to Disable Us and Keep Us Housebound?

Something Is Really Wrong With This Picture

Imagine this 1

There’s a global proliferation of artificial fragrance and methods of dispersing it. Fragrance concoctions are added to almost everything imaginable (with more ridiculous ideas emerging all the time). They are sold and used everywhere at the same time as more people are developing adverse health effects from them, effects like serious allergies, disabling “sensitivities”, migraines, asthma, neurological disorders, lowered IQ, birth defects, etc. (the list keeps growing).

These health problems are due to unregulated and secret ingredients, ingredients which pollute our bodies, our air, and the waterways they get washed into from our sinks, tubs, and showers, ingredients that are impossible to avoid now, even when we don’t want them in our lives.

If you or your child had celiac disease or a severe peanut allergy, it would be the same as the peanut and gluten industries adding peanuts and gluten or peanut and gluten mist along with doses of mood altering drugs to every product imaginable, including building materials. That would be in addition to having peanut and gluten essences worn by everyone (in their hair, armpits, clothing …), pumped out of air ducts, automated devices in public washrooms, transportation, stores, apartments, offices, hotels, even medical offices, and your neighbours burning peanuts and gluten in their fireplaces, washing with laundry with them, and then pumping the residues out of their dryer vents 24/7.

You could imagine cat allergies too, but they are usually more inconvenient than life threatening and disabling.

The fragrance industry is very aware of the adverse effects its products have on people and the environment, yet they continue to look for more ways to pollute us and every product and environment conceivably possible. They knowingly create concoctions that harm and act like drugs! Yet they consider these risks reasonable and acceptable, and choose to dismiss or ridicule those who have problems, using similar tactics the tobacco industry used to deny there are problems and to continue to profit from them.

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UnStopped and Able Until…

I have heard that new ads are out and insinuating people will somehow feel richer  merely by inhaling mysterious blends of chemicals.  Please don’t be fooled. Seriously.

“Unstopables …  will add an indulgent level of luxurious scent to every load of your laundry. Add as much as you wish for up to 12 weeks* of scent enhancement so you can smell like the lifestyle you—and your wardrobe—deserve.”

They fail to mention that your neighbors who get migraines may think that the “scent enhancement” emanating from your dryer vent (which was designed to emit moisture, not chemicals) is not such a good thing for them, their asthmatic children, or for their aging parents who have lung disease and whose window is yards from your vent.

Apparently we also don’t deserve to know what we’d be inhaling if we use these things! P&G will only refer us to the self-regulated fragrance industry’s voluntarily disclosed list of over 3000 ingredients, most of which are petroleum derived. (Scroll down for a PDF of the list, which took quite a bit of sleuthing around their other website to find).

I’ve designed a few new ads for them, simplifying some of their marketing messages into plain English for you :

UnStopped and Able Until

There’s more, much more…

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