Environmental Illness | Granitic Truth

Like an ember glows bright red when blown upon, my son’s skin reddens in response to chemicals. His nose runs, his eyes become glassy, and his breathing labored. As if someone had slipped speed into his drink, his mind races and so does his body. This has been my son’s reaction to substances like fragrance, cleaning chemicals, and car exhaust since he was just a baby.

About a year and a half ago, we were forced to remove our boy, then 12, from public school. The state of his health had reached crisis level. Weepy, bloody, septic eczema plagued him day and night. Asthma left him breathless. He cried nearly every evening when we insisted he go to school the next day.

Public school, far from being a place of safety, can be one of the most dangerous places a chemically sensitive child goes. Things like regular fumigation for pests, application of lawn chemicals, use of strong cleaning chemicals and air fresheners in classrooms, and even kids who come to school with heavy fragrance hanging about them from fabric softener, deodorant, hair products, and cologne all contribute to the creation of a very toxic environment. No child should be subjected to these things. But for a chemically sensitive child, school is very often a nightmare beyond anything most of us can imagine.

I never wanted any of my kids in school. But for my middle son especially, it felt wrong. It was like trying to pound him into a wrongly shaped container. It made him sore, out of sorts, and very sick. That’s why I was so relieved when my health finally improved enough to pull him back out. Just in time, too. I’m not sure he could have taken much more.

At first I didn’t even know how to begin to clean up the emotional and physical mess school had made of my son. We talked and talked. I put him in soothing baths of clay and Epsom salts. I gave him things to help his body heal and detoxify. I tried to teach him how to relax and think positively. But he remained fearful, depressed and exhausted until he saw the doctor, who informed him that he was not, in fact, dying. From that moment forward he began to rally. Although his rash had slowly been healing up until that time, he now made rapid progress in spite of the fact that we used almost none of the medicine prescribed for him, dramatically demonstrating that doctors can act as powerfully healing placebos.

My son’s travails must have begun in my womb. When I was pregnant, our home was brand-new and smelled like it too. It was making me sick. Imagine what it was doing to my tiny baby, developing in that chemical soup.

“We know the developing fetus is one of the most vulnerable populations, if not the most vulnerable, to environmental exposure,” said Anila Jacobs, EWG senior scientist. “Their organ systems aren’t mature and their detox methods are not in place, so cord blood gives us a good picture of exposure during this most vulnerable time of life.” –Scientific American, Tests Find More Than 200 Chemicals in Newborn Umbilical Cord Blood

Three months after my son was born, he developed his first rash, a little patch on his cheek. No big deal, right? Soon, a pustule formed near the red patch which broke and gave rise to more pustules until his entire face was covered in weepy impetigo.

The antibiotics seemed to clear the rash right up. Or had they? Just as we began giving my son his medicine, we left for a vacation on the Olympic Peninsula. As the rash cleared, I assumed the pink liquid was doing its job. By the time we arrived home, not only was the infection gone, but so was the rash. It was the first and last time for many years that the poor boy would have clear skin.

A day after our return, the rash reappeared, and for the first time it began to dawn on me that home might be the problem. Not only did we live in a brand-new house still off-gassing toxic chemicals, but also in a dirty, dusty agricultural valley, reeking of cow manure and drenched in pesticides.

On our trip, we had breathed some of the cleanest air available on planet earth, air that was continually scrubbed by frequent rain, rich in oxygen, and infused with calming ocean salt. I believed then, and still believe now, that it was the air that healed my son’s rash, not the antibiotics. From that time forward, I would continuously look for ways to move our family to cleaner air.

Why Living Near the Ocean is Beneficial to Your Health, Natural Health Ezine

Straight of Juan de Fuca where the air is pure

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.

– Isak Dinesen

My son finally has clear skin. We have not moved out of our home, but most of the chemicals seem to have moved out of it. We still live in the dirty, dusty valley. But the combined effects of pulling the boy out of school, plus our efforts to use only non-toxic products, to feed our kids healthy, clean foods, and to keep the air in our home clean and free of most chemicals seems to have finally made a difference.

What a novel and wonderful thing it would be to live in a world where keeping our kids safe and healthy is easy, where chemical toxicants in common products are unheard of and all children are safe.

The Biodwell Blog, Holistic Home Ecology

Photo by Sharon Mollerus

Photo by Alex Thomson

(Continued from Simplicity of Wellness: Love for the Earth and its Creatures , Grow and Cook Your Own Food , and Eat Local)

As I sit here writing with raised eyebrows, I wonder what I can say about this. Many of the people who know me well have already gotten an earful about the dangers of toxins. So much so that I’m sure they would rather not hear any more. And I get it, I do. No one, including me, wants to focus on negative, scary things. Nobody wants to feel overwhelmed. Nobody wants to find out that their favorite products might not be so good for them. I’d rather not have to write this, really. But I just cannot leave it out, it’s too important.

Anytime we start talking about the avoidance of danger, the difficult subject of the nocebo effect comes up. A nocebo is the opposite of a placebo. Just as a placebo can cause a person to feel better, a nocebo can cause an adverse reaction. For example, if you were told that the glass of orange juice you just drank contained arsenic, and it was then explained to you what arsenic does, there’s a good chance you would start to feel sick even if the juice was perfectly safe. We certainly can think ourselves ill.

So why focus on toxins and pollution if it can have such a negative psychological effect? I admit that I feel conflicted about that. I would rather focus on positivity. But what if the juice in the above illustration really did contain arsenic, but nobody would tell you? What if the levels of arsenic were low enough not to kill you quickly, but just enough to make you feel vaguely ill? What if you unknowingly continued drinking the arsenic laced juice for many years, damaging your body little by little, completely unaware of the reasons for your failing health? Far from being mere nocebos, like the juice, some things really are toxic, and when people avoid them, they feel better. I’ve seen it time and again. The other reason is that many commonly used household products pollute the earth, and that right there is reason enough.

So before considering this admittedly difficult subject, it’s well to remember what wellness is all about. It’s about love for God, self-love, love for others, and love for earth and all its creatures. It’s about love, not fear. So while it is necessary to understand some things about toxins so that we can protect ourselves and our families from undue harm, we must keep in mind that anxiety serves no purpose. But action based on knowledge does.

So here’s the skinny: our world is inundated with toxic chemicals. You already know that, right? But something you may not know is this: the chemicals most likely to harm you are not “out there” somewhere. It’s true that industry pollution is a big problem. But for most of us, our biggest and most damaging exposures tend to be much closer to home. They come from places like the Round-Up container in the garage, the box of dryer sheets in the laundry room, and the myriad self-care products lining our bathroom counters and cabinets.

This is difficult for many people to wrap their heads around. It certainly was for me at one time. We’d like to believe that the products we use in and around our homes, and especially those we use on our own bodies, are safe, that government agencies have our collective backs. They wouldn’t allow these things on store shelves if they were dangerous, right? Wrong.

If you’d like a detailed explanation, it is in this document by the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production: Presumption of Safety: Limits of Federal Policies on Toxic Substances in Consumer Products

From the document:

Despite the fact that most consumers believe that everyday products are thoroughly tested for dangerous chemicals and determined to be safe by government authorities, the reality is that existing regulatory systems leave significant gaps in their capacity to adequately protect consumers from chemical hazards in these products.

One of the reasons listed in the article for the failure of government agencies to protect us is the fact that many safety standards are actually voluntary, meaning that companies can opt out if they don’t want the bother of adhering to a higher standard. For example, the fragrance industry is largely self-regulated. It’s a case of the fox guarding the henhouse. Another reason is that the capacity of certain government agencies is limited due to budget constraints. Also, current laws do not actually require companies to test most products for safety hazards. Weak laws and limited governmental capacity ensure that, inevitably, some unsafe products will end up on store shelves.

You’ve heard the bad news. Now here’s the good news. Great news in fact. There are more companies making safe, non-toxic products now than ever before. In the past, we may have had to sacrifice quality and performance in the name of health, but not anymore. Many of these products work, and work well. Check out EWG’s Skin Deep Database , and Guide to Healthy Cleaning .

Also, an exciting new trend has emerged: DIY everything. Because so many people are experimenting with making their own cosmetics and cleaning products, the internet is busting at the seams with well-tested recipes. Non-toxic is now fun! One of my favorite sources for great recipes is the Wellness Mama website.

The bottom line is this: when it comes to chemicals, we have to watch our own backs. Government and industry is not going to do it for us. But we are not powerless. Education and action can make all the difference.