Category Archives: Pollution

Words Images Life Art Dance

While following the events at Standing Rock, I ran across something that impressed me that was shared from the “Dancing Earth” fb page,  and so I began following them  (please do check them out if you like powerful dance images).

At the end of April, just before MCS/ES Awareness Month was to begin, Dancing Earth posted the image below, and it made me stop in my tracks (as I scrolled through my fb newsfeed). I returned to it over and over again, and I finally asked for permission to share it here, and for the  back story about how it came to be.

This image!


Songs From The Extraction Zones
Rulan Tangen at Santa Fe Arts Institute

I kept hoping to find the words to describe why I find it to be such a powerful image, and why I feel such a personal connection to it, but I’ve been struggling from the effects of too much pollution on my brain. Pesticides, laundry products, and who knows what else have been taking their toll on my ability to string words together to do this the justice I feel it deserves, so this will not be as eloquent as I had hoped it would be, but I still want to share this with you, and maybe you will find some of your own words, or just sit with the feelings.

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MCS/ES 2017 Continued: The Canaries Are Still Waiting!

The canaries are still waiting!

“We issued a report (in 1985) that identified existing, publicly funded means of diagnosis, and accepted various methods of patient management, including avoidance of offending agents.

We did not feel that more research was needed before these and other measures were introduced to protect patients from being caused harm through inappropriate labelling or the denial of reasonable accommodation.”

Excerpted from this letter by Judge George M. Thomson, B.A., LL.B., LL.M., who chaired the extensive report by the Ad Hoc Committee on Environmental Hypersensitivity Disorders for the Province of Ontario in 1985:

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An MCS Awareness Visualization

May 12th is International MCS Awareness Day, and May is MCS Awareness Month.  Many people who have MCS also have  MCAS – Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, where chemical and other exposures cause anaphylaxis.

Guest Post from Raven

My request for you to visualize:

I’d like to ask each of my friends to sit in a quiet space for just 15 minutes and close your eyes. Breathe and get calm and relaxed.

Now I want you to think of yourself only. Visualize yourself in your body. Once you see or feel you, I want you to see yourself  Continue reading

MCS Mask Challenge for Family, Friends, and You!

Here’s an easy way for everyone to show some support!

And maybe, just maybe, wearing a mask for an hour or a day will spread some understanding of  why the people who fought for smoke free policies did that instead of expecting all non-smokers to just wear masks always and everywhere.

The Mask Challenge is brought to you by

Memes For Inconvenient Disabilities

Help us make May 2017 the last time that we ever hear or read the words:

“MCS? #NeverHeardOfIt!!”

#MaskChallenge! Do it! Grow #MCSAwareness!

Watch the video and read the transcript below:

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Fragrance Chemicals: Weapons of Environmental and Human Destruction

We are surrounded by and saturated with fragrance chemicals now.

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Fragrance Chemicals:
Weapons of Destruction

(if you have been impacted, you know this is not hyperbole)

Most fragrances are now are made from oil and gas based chemicals.

They are in our personal care, laundry, and cleaning products. They are in garbage bags, candles, and shoes. They are in toys, fire-place logs, and diapers. They are in toilet paper, stationary, and stickers. They are in clothing, pillows, and jewellery. They are in foods, plastics, and medicines. They are in kitty litter, trash bags,  and vacuum cleaner bags. They are even in pesticides, where they are regulated by the EPA, but they are not regulated by anyone when they are added to all the other products we use and are exposed to!

There’s no escaping fragrance even when housebound, because so many  deliveries of even the basics like food, arrive fragrance contaminated!

We were not designed for 24/7 exposures to toxic chemicals

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How much more evidence is needed before something is done about the human and environmental health problems caused by fragranced productss?

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Here’s an info dump with some relevant links and videos:

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Ontario Reported on MCS/ES in 1985, Yet…

MCS/ES is not new. Over 30 years ago, the Province of Ontario created the “Committee on Environmental Hypersensitivity” and appointed George Thomson, a former provincial court judge, as chairman, with a mandate to study and “advise the Ministry of Health on the occurrence of environmental hypersensitivity in Ontario and on current methods of diagnosis and treatment. Further, the committee was to make recommendations to the ministry concerning future approaches to treatment and research that should be taken”

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From the the Legislative Assembly of Ontario Official Records for 17 December 1985:

Hon. Mr. Elston: Members of this House may also recall a six-member committee which was appointed in November 1984 to study a disorder which is known as environmental hypersensitivity, or 20th-century disease. The condition has been described as multiple sensitivities or allergies to a wide range of foods, chemicals and environmental substances.

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Why I LOVE Having Environmental “Sensitivities”

Guest post

In all of this I don’t have a permanent place to stay and paid rent to a landlord who won’t fix anything, my apartment insurance cut me off and won’t help with my possessions, my medicare health insurance is not covering the health aspect and my one doctor wants me to see a doctor out of province which is not covered, and my social assistance did not pay me my disability this month, and family does not understand any of this….At this point I have nothing to lose and everything to gain….I AM MOVING FORWARD!

~ Marie LeBlanc, Manitoba, Canada

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How Much Human Contact Can We Live Without?

I saw this photograph  on facebook of  Richard Gere and Roshi Joan Halifax hugging (at the Mind and Life “Power and Care” conference), which to me exemplifies the best kind of (adult to adult) hug we humans could have.

Richard Gere and Roshi Joan Halifax

Richard Gere and Roshi Joan Halifax

I haven’t been able to stop looking at it… and it made me start trying to remember when the last time I was able to hug someone was.

I don’t think it was in 2010 when I left Toronto, as I was so sick then, and I didn’t have any spare clothes to risk contaminating them with 2nd and 3rd hand fragrance chemicals. Continue reading

Imagine Being Disabled, Confined, and Invisible

Imagine being disabled (as if drugged, dysfunctional, and definitely disbelieved more often than not) from exposures to legally allowed toxic chemicals in everyday products and materials…. or from wireless signals coming from  neighbourhood wifi networks and cell towers…

Now imagine that some of us don’t have to imagine this scenario, because we can feel our brains and bodies being harmed by the exposures just like canaries in the mines did.

Imagine being confined to a safe bubble of a home to avoid disabling exposures, Continue reading

Why?

Why do people who lose their health from being polluted and poisoned for profit end up being forced into isolation and invisibility in order to try to remain alive?

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Why?

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