=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #165
—January 24, 1990—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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MULTIPLE CHEMICAL SENSITIVITY.
Everyone knows someone who is sensitive to particular household
products. We all have a friend who must wear rubber gloves
because dishwashing detergent makes his or her hands break out or
swell up. We all know (or have heard about) babies who cannot
tolerate cow’s milk. We all recognize that people vary widely in
their response to a room full of cigarette smoke–some people can
ignore it easily while others react with stuffy nose, teary eyes,
coughing, sneezing, shortness of breath.
It should be no surprise, therefore, to learn that medical
doctors and scientists are now confirming that different people
react differently to modern compounds such as dry cleaning
solvents, perfumes, detergents, glues, waxes, pesticides, and
other common household and industrial chemicals.
Some people react violently to chemicals, to the point of being
made extremely sick by very low doses of common substances.
Typical symptoms include fatigue, severe migraine-like headaches,
nausea, that “run down” feeling, rashes, itching, swelling, pain,
stuffiness, disorientation, and dizziness. This group of symptoms
goes by various names: ecological illness, total allergy
syndrome, environmental illness, and multiple chemical
sensitivity (MCS).
We have discovered an excellent, short (151 pgs.) book called
WORKERS WITH MULTIPLE CHEMICAL SENSITIVITIES that can help
doctors, patients, and the general public understand this
mysterious condition. Here is a long quotation from the opening
chapter, by the editor of the book, Mark Cullen, MD:
“The idea for this volume evolved from a stark and disconcerting
clinical experience. Little more than a few months after the
occupational medicine clinic began at Yale, in 1979, the staff
was confronted with a problem none of us had ever seen before nor
heard about. A middle-aged man was referred [to us] because of
delayed recovery from an episode of pneumonia that had resulted
from a chemical spill on the job. As his [chest] x-ray cleared,
he had become not better, but worse. Particularly striking was
the [fact] that exposure to chemical odors would markedly
exacerbate [worsen] baseline dyspnea [shortness of breath] and
chest pain. Upon return to work, he ‘passed out’ on several
occasions after a whiff of fume. Disability leave, however, did
not resolve the situation. Increasingly, even common household
products and environmental contaminants induced [caused]
debilitating respiratory and constitutional symptoms, reducing
his formerly vigorous life to a pitiful existence at home….
“One day a strident former machine operator came to the clinic
wearing, much to everyone’s amazement, a respirator. Suddenly,
the image of the ‘gas mask’ precipitated [caused] recognition of
an identifiable [pattern], characterized by severe, recurrent and
toxicologically inexplicable symptomatic reactions to quite low
levels of common airborne substances. We discovered shortly that
we were not alone. Many of our colleagues practicing occupational
medicine around the country began reporting similar cases; they
too were stymied by them. Thus we became aware of how widespread
the problem is and how incredibly expensive the costs are for
medical care and disability in each case.”
You will need to keep a medical dictionary close by as you read
this book because it’s written by doctors for doctors. The book
consists of 13 essays, each looking at some aspect of this
difficult medical problem. Each essay ends with a lengthy
bibliography, for those who want to dig further in a medical
library. The book contains four sections: 1) overviews of the
problem; 2) attempts to define the problem scientifically; 3)
ways to diagnose the condition medically; 4) therapy for workers
suffering from multiple chemical sensitivity.
The book presents a broad range of views on the
problem–including the view that the problem is so non-specific
that it cannot be scientifically defined or treated. This view is
presented forcefully by a doctor from Stanford University, but
the remainder of the book shows that this view is out of date.
Real progress has been made in defining the condition and
understanding some of its origins. The key problem is that there
are many symptoms and probably several causes that interact with
each other. Physicians are most at ease when one kind of germ
causes one kind of disease. Multiple chemical sensitivity lies at
the other end of the spectrum–many unknowns, many causes, many
symptoms. The majority of physicians simply will not try to treat
people with multiple chemical sensitivity–they say they don’t
know anything about it and can’t help. When this happens,
insurance companies won’t provide compensation for medical
expenses or lost time; sometimes families of the patients (and
society in general) fail to understand that the symptoms are
real. The victim feels betrayed, alienated, desperately alone,
and helpless. The victim is feeling real symptoms–they are not
psychological or imagined, yet has no one to turn to. Somewhere
between 2% and 10% of the general population suffers from
multiple chemical sensitivity, and the number appears to be
growing.
Now there is a small but expanding group of physicians who are
willing to treat patients with multiple chemical sensitivity.
When physicians agree to try to help a person suffering from the
condition, the results are mixed–some therapies work, others do
not, and in both cases no one is sure why. Unfortunately, those
medical groups that do not try to help victims of MCS react far
more strongly against physicians who do try than they would
against nonphysicians trying alternative health care approaches.
There is a strong split in the medical community over this
condition. Both groups of doctors have gone through the same
medical schools and often they have gone through the same
specialty training programs. They have reached different
conclusions on this issue and the rift is deeply felt.
Many physicians studying MCS conclude that it has something to do
with a person’s immune system-in some cases, a person inherits an
immune system that is not fully functional, or a healthy immune
system is harmed by chemical exposure and thereafter reacts
strongly to additional chemical exposures. It is interesting to
note that the National Toxicology Program of the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services in 1984 observed that chemical
damage to the immune system could result in “hypersensitivity or
allergy” to specific chemicals or to chemicals in general. Damage
to the immune system, of course, can have far-reaching
consequences for an individual, leaving him or her vulnerable to
attack by bacteria and viruses, at heightened risk of cancer, and
even predisposed to develop AIDS, according to the National
Toxicology Program.[1]
The best treatment for environmental illness is avoiding the
offensive agent(s). For people with strong reactions to many
chemicals, this may mean severe restrictions on their personal
freedom. We know people who are entirely confined to their homes
because so many common chemicals make them sick.
Anyone who reads this book will quickly become convinced that
people with MCS are genuinely made ill by noxious agents in their
environment. It is not yet clear whether such people are just
different in that they are more vulnerable, or whether they are
reacting in a more acute way to agents that may also, in the
majority of the population, be responsible for
otherwise-unexplained chronic disease.
Society’s recent reaction to tobacco smoke points the way to a
general solution: increasingly, by law, smokers must smoke in
places and ways that do not impact anyone beyond themselves. The
same principal, applied to the users of all chemicals, would
protect the rights of those with MCS, and would be consistent
with the principle of “no dumping” or zero discharge. (See RHWN #106 and #155.)
Get: Mark R. Cullen, editor, WORKERS WITH MULTIPLE CHEMICAL
SENSITIVITIES (Philadelphia, PA: Hanley and Belfus [201 South
13th St., Philadelphia, PA 19107; phone (215) 546-4995], 1987).
This is Volume 2, No. 4 of the ongoing series called OCCUPATIONAL
MEDICINE, STATE OF THE ART REVIEWS. An annual subscription to the
series costs $68; single issues cost $32.00.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
===============
[1] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health
Service, National Toxicology Program, FISCAL YEAR 1984 ANNUAL
PLAN (Research Triangle, Nc: National Toxicology Program [P.O.
Box 12233, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709; phone 919/541-3991],
1984), pg. 157.”
Descriptor terms: ecological illness; multiple chemical
sensitivity; food safety; consumer safety;