Chemical Overload

When your environment is your enemy

by ALICIA PRIEST

Annie Hopper’s world makes her sick. It’s the same seemingly benign planet the rest of us inhabit, blissfully ignorant of the tens of thousands of synthetic chemicals embedded in almost everything around us, from clothes to cars to shampoo to front lawns.

While some of these substances may cause us to suffer the occasional sneeze, itch, or even allergic reaction, for Hopper they trigger a cascade of unpleasant and painful responses that have turned her everyday life upside down and inside out.

“My life, right now, is very isolating,” Hopper says in an interview from her home in Kelowna. “That would be bad for anyone, but I am really social . . . To go for a walk in my neighbourhood is painful because everybody is doing their clothes and the dryer fumes are in the air and it’s full of chemicals. I don’t smell the smell anymore; I taste the chemicals underneath the smell. It’s akin to eating poison.”

What Hopper and others like her experi-ence is known as multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), or environmental hypersensitivity disease. Although mainstream science doesn’t consider MCS a legitimate disease, an increasing number of people are responding to their environment in negative ways. Small wonder.

A June 2006 study by Toronto’s Environmental Defence organization tested five Canadian families for 68 chemicals. The study, titled Polluted Children, Toxic Nation, found 48 of the 68 chemicals tested for, including pesticides, PCBs, mercury, and lead. On average, they found 32 chemicals in each parent and 23 in each child. Given that scenario, MCS could very well be an indication of a global public health problem involving a host of diseases such as allergies, asthma, and cancers.

Hopper’s problems began about a year ago, when she suddenly developed severe headaches in reaction to what she believes was an accumulation of man-made chemicals in her body. The trigger, she suspects, was an air freshener masking the odour of harmful chemicals in the building where she worked. Before that, she’d been fit, active, and healthy.

Now, her responses to an increasing number of substances include headaches, nausea, an inability to speak or think, shaking, and even convulsions. Soon after the first episode, Hopper walked past a scented candle display. “I thought I was going to have a brain hemorrhage. My brain hurt so badly I couldn’t drive, I couldn’t speak,” she recalls.

Hopper’s doctor referred her to an allergist. ButHopper says her problem is not an allergy but, rather, the failure of her body to protect itself from noxious chemicals, particularly those with a petroleum base.

Hopper switched every cleaning and personal-care product in her home, including soaps, shampoos, deodorants, and make-up, from regular to natural products. As well, she has stopped buying furniture or carpets because of the chemicals “off-gassing” from these products. (For more information, see saferbuildings.com.) She now avoids people who use products such as Tide or Bounce or perfume. In other words, just about everyone.

“I do not react if I’m around people who use completely natural products,” she says.

Therein lies the good news: the number of safer, more natural products is on the rise. (But “natural” is no guarantee that a product does not contain harmful ingredients.)

Nova Scotia leads the country in its understanding of MCS. The condition hit the headlines in the late 1980s when hundreds of employees at a teaching hospital became ill at their workplace. The diagnosis? “Environmental sensitivities.” However, that incident resulted in the establishment of the Nova Scotia Environmental Health Centre, a publicly funded clinic in Fall River dedicated to treatment and research. NSEHC medical director Dr. Roy Fox says that, although there is a great deal of “resistance and skepticism” from the medical establishment toward MCS, there is also an increasing awareness.

“When we looked at our figures a few years ago, half the physicians in Nova Scotia had referred patients for our opinion,” he said in an email interview. “This has increased and we continue to have a high rate of referral . . . NSEHC is part of the Capital District Health Authority and we are certainly supported in the work that we do.”

If only residents in the rest of Canada were so lucky. Several groups rate products online, including the Environmental Health Association of Nova Scotia (lesstoxicguide.ca) and the MCS Canadian Sources Support Group (mcscanadian.org).

Alicia Priest is a Victoria-based freelance writer who, after years of perfume use, now finds that perfumes and other “scented” products stink.

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