Regrets and Memories

John Burroughs: "I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see."

Why do I take on more than I have time or energy to do? I know I am not thirty years old anymore and my body cannot keep up with my mind that hatches all these wonderful ideas.

I finally got the taxes done so that is off my worry list, but this weekend I will be speaking at a writers conference. That is not the problem. The problem is that I will be staying at a motel overnight on Friday and, unless they are very accommodating of my chemical sensitivities, I could wake up sick on Saturday morning. Then, my day will be most difficult.

Today I had my yearly eye exam and found all my tests are A-OK. Having diabetes, one is always a little nervous about the vision exams. They take photos of my eyes, and test for glaucoma, and probably other things I don't know about. My doctor is such a nice man. His wife works with him and she helped me choose new frames for my new prescription. I think I will be happy with them. I haven't been happy with what I've worn for a couple of years now. These will only have a lens for reading and a lens for working at the computer. 

I can remember the day when I was first fitted for glasses. I was in fifth grade at McIntosh School. The doctor said I didn't have to wear them all the time and shouldn't. But, it was so great to be able to see well that I didn't want to take them off, and I didn't except when I went to bed. 

It was only after I reached the stage where boys became important to me that I wished I didn't need glasses. I often went on "blind" dates, dates that I didn't wear my glasses and pretended I could see well. I hated wearing glasses when I was a teen. It seems today they are more fashionable and even celebrities wear them publicly. I tried to wear contact lenses - twice - but could not stand them in my eyes. 

Now when I get into my car to drive, I leave my glasses at home. When I take my test this year for my drivers license, I will be able to pass the requirements without my glasses. How strange life is. I don't care a hoot about how I look in glasses now, at this age. Everybody I know wears glasses. I even like myself better in glasses than without them.  

If only the girl I was at sixteen had been able to drive without glasses. That girl would have thought she was pretty if only she had not worn glasses. When I look back at her pictures, I can see she was pretty. I just wish she had known it. 

I spoke and they listened. What more could I ask for?

Saturday I was scheduled to give a talk at the local library. My sister Gay and her husband, Stu, and friends from out of town came. Although I stand before groups and read and speak often, this engagement was different. I had never spoken on this subject.

We arrived at the library, my brother-in-law carrying my box of props consisting of spray bottles, catalogs, detergent boxes and other things. By 1:45 PM I felt sure my ten handouts were a waste of paper. No one was there except Carolyn, the lady who had invited me to speak.

Obviously no one was interested in my subject, De-toxing Your Home. Perhaps they were like my dear friend Virginia who said there was no reason for her to come. She wasn’t going to do that.

May has been declared in many states as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity month. I hoped to raise awareness in my community about the dangers of the chemicals we use every single day while thinking they are safe. I hoped to encourage those who didn’t know better to stop using scented dryer sheets, scented detergents, and all the scented products on the market that appeal to women especially, but do not give the facts about the toxins they contain.

Suddenly just before two o’clock the doors opened and folks began streaming in.  I relaxed then and enjoyed speaking to people who knew of many things I mentioned and some who wanted to know more. One lady said she has had to come home in the middle of the night because she couldn’t find a motel or hotel room that wasn’t “fragranced” and she knew if she stayed there she would be sick. Others told of problems with perfume and stores that used “air fresheners” and I realized that, just here in our little town, were a number of people with MCS.
My handouts ran out and we made more. The long list of recipes I gave them for making their own safe products seemed to be appreciated.

The group was so enthusiastic about the subject that my one hour talk stretched into 90 minutes. Best of all, my friend Linda told me, “You have finally gotten my attention.” She and her husband plan to make up recipes for their home care, using simple ingredients such as vinegar, soda, water, Borax or washing soda. The cheapest ways to clean are the best ways to clean our homes. No unsafe chemicals in these ingredients.

My weekend was terrific with my family and friends here. And I feel I made a difference, in my own small way, to raising awareness of indoor air pollution, chemical sensitivities, and keeping our air pure and safe for all of us.

I don't want to hurt your feelings, but...

How does one tell a loved one "don't sit near me. Your perfume makes me sick?" That is the quandary I find myself in too much of the time lately. Having just returned from a visit to see my family, I spent most of my time explaining that I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but fragrances make me very ill.
Most people don't even know they have a fragrance on their body. They assume if they do not douse on a bit of cologne or perfume, they are completely fragrance-free. They forget the hairspray they used just before leaving home, the scented deodorant, the shaving cream, the scented soap, the lingering fragrance of detergent and fabric softener in their clothes.
"Well, what can I do," you might ask. "Everything we buy has fragrance in it."
We can read labels and learn what is in our products. We can ask our grocery store and our drug stores to have an aisle with Non-scented products. Yes, there are non-scented ones out there.
Those of us who suffer with respiratory illness due to chemical fragrances are not the only ones who are being harmed.
What about the baby brought home from the hospital to a nursery with an
"air freshner" plugged into the wall emitting damaging fumes for the child to breathe. What about the baby blanket washed and dried in chemically fragranced detergent and fabric softener? What about the chemicals his mother has ingested for the past nine months through her clothing, her cosmetics, her cleaning products? The baby has those chemicals in his body when he is born.

In Canada now we find some fragrance -free areas in hospitals because many of us are made sicker inside a hospital with the harsh chemical cleaners and the fragrances used there. Some churches are becoming fragrance-free. This is happening because we are becoming aware of the health issues.

At my house and my studio, I ask everyone to refrain from wearing fragrance. But at times, my ultra sensitive system reacts to something on them - their clothes, the perfume they wore yesterday, or even three days ago. I can't tell them what it is, but I know I must get away from them.

People who sing have long known that perfumes and other fragrances are bad for them. Choir members are told to never wear fragrance to choir practice or to church service.

We would never ask this of anyone if there was not a darn good reason. If these fragrances are making me sick, it won't be long before they are making others sick as well. I am one of the canaries in the coal mine. And there are about 30 million of us now.

JOAN HETZLER, RADIO SHOW HOST AND WRITER

Recently I interviewed Joan Hetzler who produces and hosts the Writers Show on WAWL in Chattanooga, TN. I was on Joan's show a couple of years ago, and she invited me come back and talk about my poetry book, Now Might AsWell Be Then, but we had to cancel due to the rock slide between Murphy NC and Cleveland TN. I hope I can go later because I found Joan extremely professional and I enjoyed the entire experience. The following is my interview with Joan.


Glenda: I know you host the Writers Show on WAWL in Chattanooga. You are a writer, yourself. Why did you decide to pursue a radio show for writers? What was your purpose?

Joan: There are a lot of programs that offer published and well know writers the chance to promote their books. However, I didn't know of one that promoted the "craft" of writing and also gave unpublished authors that chance to air their work. The purpose of the show is to encourge and promote writing as well as readers.

Glenda: How do you plan your shows as to what writers, what kind of writing and how many writers you have on one show?

Joan: I try to have a variety of topics. For example, I've had playwrights with actors read their works, a tv producer talk about writing for broadcast news and air a sample story, poets, and storytellers. Right now we are limited in the number of guests but in a few months, WAWL is moving to a new studio where I hope to have several authors discuss writing in a roundtable set up.

Glenda: You tape your show yourself. You edit the show and, it seems, you do everything for the show including the interviews. How did you learn all this and how does this show help your own writing?

Joan: Originally, I had a producer who did all that. Due to staff cutbacks and tight deadlines, I found it helpful for me to learn to record and edit. If the show helps my writing, it's to keep my work condensed and just the essentials because both readers and listeners have limited time. Today, there are so many other forms of entertainment that pulls for a reader or listener's attention, that I'm aware the content needs to be interesting and fast paced.

Glenda: Thanks so much, Joan. I feel sure our readers will enjoy learning about you and your show.

Joan Hetzler was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and attended Chattanooga High School and The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga before moving to Atlanta to work for several years as a secretary. In her late twenties, she completed her undergraduate degree at Agnes Scott College and Emory University with a major in Philosophy. While working as a technical writer documenting computer software, she attended Georgia State University to compete a masters degree in applied philosophy with a focus on artificial intelligence.



Just before completing her M.A. degree, she developed severe allergies to chemicals in her work environment and moved back to Northwest Georgia. She lived in a log cabin on her mother's farm where she raised chickens, did organic farming, and took an active role in setting up an environmental group and establishing a community wide recycling program.



From North Georgia, she moved to St. Simons Island, where she lived for ten years until returning to Chattanooga. While on St. Simons, she wrote and published poetry chapbooks, established a poetry writing group, wrote newspaper articles, and a memoir about many of her experiences. Her poetry has also been published in the Savannah Literary Journal. Her writing has won awards in humor, nonfiction, playwriting and mystery at the Southeastern Writers Conference.

Since returning to Chattanooga, Ms. Hetzler has served on the Board of Directors of the Chattanooga Writers Guild. Her drama skits have been peformed in a local church. Selections from her memoir have been published at Southernscribe.com and other publications. She hosts The Writers Show, a local radio progam for writers which airs the first Sunday of each month at 1 pm. To find out more about the program, visit http://sites.google.com/site/thewritersshow.

A picture is worth a thousand words, it’s true. This is me, yesterday, after spending a week sleeping in a hard chair that makes into a hard cot.

Today, after a shower, after I shampooed my hair, and changed clothes, this could be me..

Water is a healing force that washes away stress, soothes our rumpled minds and un-kinks the knots of fear that climb up our backs and clamp on to the tendons in our necks.

If I could I'd head for this pool, one of my favorite places, winter and summer. I'd slip into the warmth of this oasis in the middle of my frazzzled world and wash away worries, refresh my senses and clean my lungs of the chemicals worn by almost every person I meet.

Your Fragrance is Killing Me -- and You and Your Children

Have you ever counted how many cosmetics or personal care products you use in a day? Chances are it's nearly 10. And chances are good that they include shampoo, toothpaste, soap, deodorant, hair conditioner, lip balm, sunscreen, body lotion, shaving products if you're a man, and cosmetics if you are a woman. And what about your children? On any given day you might rub, spray, or pour some combination of sunscreen, diaper cream, shampoo, lotion, and maybe even insect repellant on their skin.

Most people use these products without a second thought, and believe that the government must certainly be policing the safety of the mixtures in these myriad containers. But they are wrong about this.

The government does not require health studies or pre-market testing for these products before they are sold. And as people apply an average of 126 unique ingredients on their skin daily, these chemicals, whether they seep through the skin, rinse down the drain, or flush down the toilet in human excretions, are causing concerns for human health, and for the impacts they may have to wildlife, rivers and streams.

Why personal care products? At first blush it may seem that mascara and shaving cream have little relevance to the broader world of environmental health. Think again. In August 2005, when scientists published a study finding a relationship between plasticizers called phthalates and feminization of U.S. male babies, they named fragrance as a possible culprit. When estrogenic industrial chemicals called parabens were found in human breast tumor tissue earlier this year, researchers questioned if deodorant was the source. And when studies show, again and again, that hormone systems in wildlife are thrown in disarray by common water pollutants, once again the list of culprits include personal care products, rinsing down drains and into rivers.

At the Environmental Working Group we have researched and advocated on personal care product safety for five years now, and consider it an integral part of our work to strengthen our system of public health protections from industrial chemicals. Here's why:

Industrial chemicals are basic ingredients in personal care products. The 10,500 unique chemical ingredients in these products equate to about one of every eight of the 82,000 chemicals registered for use in the U.S.

Personal care products contain carcinogens, pesticides, reproductive toxins, endocrine disruptors, plasticizers, degreasers, and surfactants. They are the chemical industry in a bottle.
No premarket safety testing required — this is a reality of both the personal care product industry and the broader chemical industry as a whole. For industrial chemicals, the government approves an average of seven new chemicals every day.

Eighty percent are approved in three weeks or less, with or without safety tests. Advocating that industry have an understanding of product safety before selling to the public finds common messages, common methods, and common gains whether the focus is cosmetic ingredients or other industrial chemicals.
Everyone uses personal care products. Exposures are widespread, and for some people, extensive. Our 2004 product use survey shows that more than a quarter of all women and one of every 100 men use at least 15 products daily. These exposures add up, and raise questions about the potential health risks from the myriad of unassessed ingredients migrating into the bodies of nearly every American, day after day.

No safety testing. According to the agency that regulates cosmetics, the FDA's Office of Cosmetics and Colors, "...a cosmetic manufacturer may use almost any raw material as a cosmetic ingredient and market the product without an approval from FDA" (FDA 1995). The industry's self-policing safety panel falls far short of compensating for the lack of government oversight. An EWG analysis found that in its 30-year history, the industry's self-policing safety panel has reviewed the safety of just 11 percent of the 10,500 ingredients used in personal care products. FDA does no systematic reviews of safety. And collectively, the ingredients in personal care products account for one of every eight of the 82,000 chemicals industries have registered for commercial use with the Environmental Protection Agency.

The article above is excerpted from http://www.ewg.org/. In a recent post I commented on chemical sensitivity which is a deadly problem for some of us. When you read the above and other information about the chemicals we ingest into our bodies, our childrens' bodies and how many of these chemicals pollute the air that others have to breathe, I hope you will think carefully about reading labels and becoming an advocate for the health of all of us. I've heard from others who have to deal with chemical sensitivity and it is a very serious problem.

82,000 chemicals are manufactured in this country and the people, you and I, are being subjected to the danger of them every day and in every place, including our own homes.

Indoor pollution is killing me!

This scene is outside our house where the air is healthier than it is inside. Pristine and pure, our air we breathe must be as clean as the driven snow. photo by Barry Beall

Do you know anyone with chemical sensitivity? You might have it yourself. Do perfume and other fragrances bother you? Can you use Clorox in your laundry without it taking your breath or making you cough?

I first noticed my chemical sensitivity when anyone wearing perfume came close to me. My husband had to stop wearing the cologne I'd always loved on him. When I was in the room with my sister June, I had to stay as far from her as possible because she loves perfume. I had to leave our church choir one Sunday because a sweet lady wore her favorite perfume.

This is a malady that is affecting more and more older people. It also hits children pretty hard. One woman said her two year old suddenly developed asthma and she learned it was from the cleaning products she used in the house. The child, whose immune system is not as strong as an adult's, couldn't handle the dangerous chemicals polluting the house.
This week, although I've gone as green as possible in my house, we are having a renovation done and after the plumber had come to put in the pipes for the washing machine, I had the worst attack I've had in many years. Turns out it was the glue used on the PVC piping. The harsh chemicals took my breath and I had to go outside to breathe. We closed off the new laundry room, placed an air filter machine in the living area but I had to retire to my little cubby hole of a room with my own air cleaner which runs day and night, close my door and hibernate.

When we can't get oxygen into our lungs our bodies shut down. My brain stopped working properly. I grew extremely sleepy, and coughed and wheezed until my throat hurt. I felt like my chest was weighed down with heavy bags, and I couldn't empty my lungs.

After that experience, my system was so overloaded that everything triggered asthma for me. It has been a hard week because of this ,and I can't wait until John finishes his work and we can, hopefully, clean the air in the house and get rid of the indoor pollution that seems to be killing me. Did you know that we have about 85% more pollution inside our houses than we have in the outside air?
My sweet sister, Gay, who has come up this week from Atlanta to help me, discovered today that her hairspray brings on my asthma attacks. She was so sure she had an unscented hairspray that would not bother me, but I can smell it on her clothes, and it triggers a coughing spell and difficulty breathing.

I am hoping that within a few days, I'll feel better but until then I might have to become a hermit and stay in my little room with my computer.

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.