Category Archives: Environmental Health

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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Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) Brochure

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.

MCS clinic brochure 2 exerpt 1a

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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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

The Environmental Working Group’s recent post about “five couches without flame-retardants”

Excellent post from Oecotextiles regarding what more we need to know about furniture… Some important details that EWG somehow managed to leave out of their post about couches

O Ecotextiles (and Two Sisters Ecotextiles)'s avatarOEcotextiles

In a  post dated March20, 2015, the EWG’s Enviroblog had a list of five sofas without flame-retardants that you can buy right now. It is, of course, wonderful that the State of California has revised their antique law requiring flame-retardants in furniture, but shame on the Environmental Working Group for failing to point out the many other components of sofas which are impacting our health. By not pointing out the effects that these components have on our health, people believe that a fire retardant-free sofa is safe. Yes, we have a broken federal law that purports to protect us, and yes, fire retardants are finally getting the recognition as the bad guys they deserve. But having a flame retardant-free sofa doesn’t mean you’re home safe!

Of the five sofas on the list, West Elm stands out as giving no information at all on the components – a sure sign of…

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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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Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals Are Costly to ALL of Society

(not just those of us who are adversely affected before others)

“Global experts in this field concluded that infertility and male reproductive dysfunctions, birth defects, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and neurobehavioral and learning disorders were among the conditions than can be attributed in part to exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs).”

New research estimates the cost in Europe alone to be in the billions of dollars. As these endocrine disrupting chemicals have been inflicted on the global population, and are found in countless everyday products and materials, the costs to society are huge (and the profits to the chemical and pharmaceutical companies are equally huge).

“The overwhelming majority of the reported costs were from “lost cognitive potential”
Dr Leonardo Trasande

I’ve posted about EDCs a few times, including here:

Endocrine Disruption… Huh? Why Should We Care?

Many of us have no idea what “those people” are talking about when they mention endocrine disruptors. Sounds like something foreign and insignificant, or at least it did to me, until something caught my attention a few years ago. …

Here are links to some of the news articles and how you can avoid some EDCs:

 

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A Fine Fragrance for a Special Valentine

This is special, so special that you might be inspired in ways that surprise you!

MYSTERY 2MYSTERY… Should we trust the fragrance industry with our loved ones health?

We could buy products that are made by a self regulated industry that believes it’s ok to include many harmful chemicals (derived from petroleum and other fossil fuels) in their products (according to their member’s voluntary disclosure of over 3000 ingredients, which is as close to disclosure as they come) or we can show our love for each other by doing things that nurture long term health and well-being for each other and the planet we all depend on for life.

The choice is ours once we know it exists.

Here are a few more nourishing ideas for gifts of love:

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Revolutionary Way to Freshen the Air

Freshening the air is big business these days. Polluting the air is also very profitable. Sadly, it’s usually similar chemicals  polluting the air as are in the substances sold to “freshen” it.

What does fresh air smell like?

fragrance emitting products smell like chemicals

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