Tag Archives: MCAS

What Now?

 

A brief account of a seriously “sensitive” to pollution person living in a society where fragranced and toxic products are more important than lives, where disabled lives are disposeable, where it’s now easy to be euthanized (even for for externally imposed and inflicted) suffering, but not to receive support to remove the causes of suffering, causes and conditions that have been made systemic for many people with disabilities.

I’m not a poet and I know it and I wrote it anyway…

What Now? Continue reading

Two Tales: Temporary Quarantine or Long-term Segregation

 

There have been several articles in the news lately about the experiences of people who have been forced to endure quarantine or social isolation due to the coronavirus.

Many other people are worried about having to stay at home for a couple of weeks, without access to their regular activities, because they have never had to think about what it’s like, but some of us (indeed millions around the world) have been forced  to stay confined and isolated, sometimes for most of our lives! Our stories are seldom told, and when they are told, they’re often dismissed as anomalies and quickly forgotten.

 

When I saw the following articles, I felt the need to add a different perspective.

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The Fragrance Free Revolution

Are you on facebook?

If so, please check out and follow the

Fragrance Free Revolution

They share  memes with accompanying information for people with chemical, fragrance, and environmental ‘sensitivities’.

This is one of my absolute favourites!

Image description:

A fair skinned woman is growing out of a terra cotta flower pot. She wears something white and sleeveless. She has long wavy hair that is surrounded by several pink flowers of varying sizes. Her head is tilted to one side and that arm is holding up one of the flowers between her ear and her forehead.

Image text:

If you were meant to smell of fragrance you would’ve been a plant.

Be fragrance free, it’s what nature intended.

#No Fragrances #No Essential Oils  SOS #Back to Basics

 

Direct link to this specific fb post:
https://www.facebook.com/fragrancefreerevolution/photos/a.107251783966059/192533602104543/

 

 

How to Basics: Accessible Washrooms for People With MCS/ES

So many accessibility guidelines completely skip the fact that these necessary and super easy to implement accessibility measures make it possible for perhaps  1/3 of the population to use (or use without harm) a public (or other) washroom, and especially help provide access for those who have disabling chemical and or environmental “sensitivities” (a term that trivializes the condition and effects).

Fragranced products not only create accessibility barriers for people with chemical and environmental “sensitivities”, fragrance sensitivity, autism, sensory sensitivities, migraines, asthma, MCAS/MCAD, and others, but fragrance ingredients have been linked to a number of other short and serious long term health effects in the general population.

It has come to our attention that too many places that hang up a scent or fragrance-free sign in the front office, have air effers and scented soaps in the washrooms. That’s not how this is done.

How to Basics:
Accessible washrooms for people with environmental sensitivities

Image is of a public washroom with sinks on the left side, a cleaning cart in the middle, and garbage cans holding open the stall doors on the right. There are purple bars across the image with the following lines of accessibility tips text:

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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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Friendship and Fragrance

There are reasons people choose and enjoy isolation, but developing disabling adverse effects from the toxic chemicals in everyday products and materials is seldom one of them.

Do you know someone who says fragrances bother or disable them? Chances are pretty good that you do, now that 34.7% of the population experience adverse effects, ranging from mild to severe and disabling, from fragrance exposures.

When your friend, family member, or colleague informs you that something you use has an adverse effect on them, how would you respond?

Do you choose the friendship? Or the product?

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