Multiple Chemical Sensitivity or Why I Had to Flee McDonald's

Once again, today, I was overpowered by a fragrance so harsh I had to escape the area. While waiting for my order at McDonald's, a man and a woman came and stood beside me. At the first whiff, I assumed the young woman wore the smelly spray, perfume, lotion or whatever caused the fumes that began closing my throat and burning my nasal passages.

I left the counter with my hand over my nose and mouth and rushed as far as I could get from the couple without leaving the restaurant. As I watched for my food to be brought out, the woman took her latte and left.

Good, I thought, she won't be sitting near me. I waited by the side door and took my tray when it was ready.

As soon as I sat down, the smell hit me again. I looked up and saw the guy who had been standing in line near me. He had plopped down fifteen feet away from my table. The odor emanating from him smelled worse to me than a skunk's spray, the chemicals in that fragrance he wore poisoned me. By the time I got out of there, hoarse and coughing, I gasped, sucked in the fresh outside air like it was my final breath.

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. More and more of my friends are experiencing the same symptoms -- spending tons of money on doctors who run tests and tell them they have asthma and to stay away from chemicals. Duh!! The asthma is caused by the chemicals we breathe every day, the chemicals all around us, the chemicals we can't escape.

In this world we live in there is no place free of VOCs, parabens and pthalates , not even our own homes. Unless we educate ourselves about these chemical dangers we continue to bring them into our safe places. One friend had her carpets cleaned before Christmas, became ill with shortness of breath, and saw her doctor.

What did the doctor do? With this scenerio, doctors only know to give more chemicals (drugs) to counteract the poisoning by the chemicals in the carpet cleaner.

Where will it all end?

Human exposure and VOCs in fragranced consumer products

Human exposure studies, over the past two decades, have revealed widespread U.S. population exposure to VOCs and the largest contributors of VOCs to humans (nearly 90%) are rather small sources, largely unregulated, yet often within our control. In particular, fragrance compounds, used in a wide variety of consumer products, can be primary sources of human exposure toVOCs. (EPA, 1989; Sack et al., 1992; Wallace et al., 1991a; Cooper et al.,1992, 1995).

Visit The Canary Report to learn more about MCS.

Pollution of our bodies by folks we trust

The EWG newsletter I receive monthly has an interesting article that says the expensive bottled water we buy is no purer than regular tap water from our cities' treatment plants.Scientists have taken samples of bottled water which usually makes us thing of clear mountain springs, and tested it to find fecal bacteria, man made chemicals I can't even spell or pronounce and remnants of pain medicines, which have come from our bodies. The Environmental Working Group works hard to bring to the attention of the public and Congress that we are killing ourselves with the chemicals we ingest every day in ways we aren't even aware of.

My well water is cleaner than the so called "purified" water in the bottles we buy. Who would ever have thought when I was growing up that we would be buying water at nearly $2.00 a pop. This report says we need to insist that Congress pass a law that makes these bottlers and manufacturers tell the truth about what is in the water, especially for the sake of children. They have found that babies are being born with chemical pollution in their system from what the mothers ate or drank while pregnant.

While talking with a doctor this week, we discussed the growth of lymphoma diagnoses in recent years. He said they will someday find out it has to do with what we are eating. But I think it goes farther than that.
Every woman in America who gets up each morning, showers, shampoos her hair, uses deodorants, body washes, and scented lotions, pours hundreds of foreign chemicals into her body. Then she puts on makeup, eyeliner, lipstick, cologne, and sprays her hair to make it last all day.

What we put on our skin goes into our bodies. All that small print on the bottles, tubes and jars, tells you what chemicals you are ingesting through your skin. It gets into your bloodstream and main organs. One woman tested her blood for chemicals and was surprised to find things in there that she would not have ingested knowingly. Many of the things like parabens and pthalates are found in almost all cosmetics. The EWG website tells what they have found to be safe cosmetics, nail polish and other things that will not slowly poison us over the years.

As a person who must deal with a sensitivity to chemicals which bring on asthma, break down my immune system, and give me blinding headaches, I learned I am not alone. Many women my age are fighting this same syndrome. Over the years we have ingested so many dangerous chemicals into our bodies that our system is completely overloaded. With age, our natural immunity gives out and these man made chemicals that are not supervised by our FDA, creep into more and more of our products and we don't even know they are there or that they are poisoning us.
To learn more on this subject, go to http://www.ewg.org/ and see for yourself.
This is the information that should be forwarded around the world by email instead of the cruel and lying political junk I get everyday.