Tag Archives: MCS

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

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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Sometimes They Listen, Sometimes They Don’t

(This post is for us, not so much for those who’ve made it clear they can’t hear us)

There have been a lot of online arguments lately, where people just aren’t listening to each other. I know this phenomenon isn’t limited to what’s happening online either, especially when it comes to people choosing petroleum based fragrances (or other petrochemical products and materials) over family and friends, or worse, over the health of their children! (yes, it happens, and it’s happening far too often these days)

naninanipoopoo

(naninanipoopoo is something my kids used to say when they wanted me to know they weren’t going to listen to me)

Then, just like the fragrance industry is doing, by creating fragrances for absolutely everything, I too  was inspired to come up with a fragrance for that: Continue reading

Are Fragrances Drugs By Design?

From the FDA

drugs FDA

Drug by definition:

drug 1

What about fragrances when they target our brains and brain functions, including moods and perceptions?

From the fragrance industry:

Aromachology and the brain

To use fragrance technology to transmit feelings directly to the brain

???

That sounds a lot like drugs to me!

From the FDA… Is it a drug?

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Fragrance Free Environments and No Fragrance Spaces

Someone shared a very good PDF handout with me the other day, one that I had never seen before. It gently explains to people why there is a problem with fragrance, why people may need to avoid fragrances, that it is not the smell, it’s not personal, and a few other bits of helpful information  The resource links are old and could be updated (somehow), but it’s otherwise a great tool to share with people who don’t understand.

I can’t find a link to share it from elsewhere, so I am posting it here to make it easily available.

Fragrance-Free Environments and No-Fragrance Spaces (PDF)

Fragrance Free Environments and No Fragrance Spaces

The text image is copied below.

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How to Have Company (or Repairmen) In Your Home When You Have MCS/ES

Even when people try to be fragrance (and other chemical) free, they can have 2nd and 3rd hand residues from personal care, cleaning, and laundry products all over them. Air “fresheners” and scented candles are other items that leave residues on everything. It can take weeks to get it out of skin and pores, and longer to get it out of clothing and bedding, all the while re-contaminating the body and anything else that has contact with the fragranced surfaces or air.

rigmarole

Fragrance (and other toxic) chemicals are just all-pervasive now. Unless people are completely fragrance-free and stay out of fragrance filled places, they will have some degree of fragrance saturation in their clothes, skin, and hair. Some of the residues are also impossible to remove no matter how hard one tries, because of chemicals that are designed to penetrate and remain active for long periods of time (think of the  laundry commercials where they boast you can smell the fresh scent days later – except some of us can be affected years later, because that’s how permanent those chemicals are).

If people who use those products come to visit, not only can they leave us gasping for air (or worse) during their visit, they can leave chemical residues that will keep off-gassing from the couch and anyplace else they touched for days or weeks to come.

fragrance around a sofa

Depending on how severe one’s MCS/ES is,there are different things that can be done.

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MCS: A Life Altering Condition (Video)

 

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity: A Life Altering Condition

Produced and Directed by Alison Johnson
1:09:28 minutes

Note from Alison Johnson:

“Since 1998, I have made three long documentaries and three short ones. During this fifteen-year period, I have gained a much deeper understanding of multiple chemical sensitivity and its great impact upon so many lives. This new composite film contains the best and most effective sections of my six earlier films. I have chosen carefully which experts and patients to use from my earlier films so that this new film will be an effective way of helping people to understand multiple chemical sensitivity. The film contains footage of interviews with four members of Congress as well as with many important physicians.”

More info and a list of physicians appearing in the film:
http://www.alisonjohnsonmcs.com/multiple-chemical-sensitivity-a-life-altering-condition-dvd.html

Transcript:
http://chemicalsensitivityfoundation.org/multiple-chemical-sensitivities-life-altering-condition-transcript.html

mcs-a-life-altering-condition

Much gratitude to Alison Johnson for all of her work over the years.

MCS/ES Accommodation Resources

When people develop MCS/ES, it can be extremely challenging maintaining access to jobs, housing, or other services due to the prevalence of indoor air pollution and pollutants, fragrance chemicals being a huge factor. When MCS/ES becomes disabling, it becomes a human rights issue requiring accommodation under the law in many places around the world.

Here then are some accessibility tools:

In the presentation from ADA Audio Conferencing – A program of the ADA National Network

One important point made was this:

MCS ES fragrance free policy

For people with EHS, a wireless-free policy is required, as well as other accommodations mentioned in the presentation.

Here are a few of the slides from Accommodating Persons with Environmental Sensitivities: Challenges and Solutions (which is available to download from the link below):

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