As if I don’t already have enough to do, I lost control of my senses a while back and agreed to help put together a conference on nature and environmental writing. When organizing a conference, the easy part is lining up the tangible goods: rooms, chairs, lecterns, food. Or so I thought.
As it happens, two of our panelists are afflicted with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, or MCS. Suddenly, organizing the tangibles was a daunting task. Multiple Chemical Sensitivity is the name given to the reaction sufferers have to low levels of many different chemicals. It is a syndrome whose onset is often related to an environmental exposure, most commonly a solvent or a pesticide. While each case is different, a victim is often exposed to a fairly high levels of a chemical and thereafter has symptoms triggered by slight exposure to any one of a number of chemicals.
The symptoms are no fun whatsoever. Irritability, insomnia, difficulty concentrating and remembering, grogginess, fatigue, ringing in the ears, headache, joint pain, muscle pain, abdominal pain and constipation. Added to these injuries is the insult of not being believed. A common reaction to MCS – by someone not afflicted with it – is that the condition is all in the sufferer’s head.
If it were only that simple. Reports of MCS in medical literature date back more than 40 years, to the era when we first started drenching our surroundings in chemicals. It is estimated that 10 to 15 percent of the American public is now afflicted with MCS to some degree and those numbers are rising.
In organizing the conference, I had to become an MCS sufferer by proxy and look at the world through the eyes of one whose movements in the modern world are seriously constrained.
Are the rooms carpeted? Carpets and carpet glues emit volatile chemicals. If there’s no carpet, what is used to clean the floor? How often? How recently? Are there windows that can be opened? Are there curtains on the windows? Have they been dry-cleaned recently? Can an air filter be obtained? If I bring my own, is there a place where I can plug it in? Will I have to pass through an area that has been recently painted?
Imagine the person who indulges too freely in cologne, merely annoying to you or I, but incapacitating to an MCS sufferer. Imagine foregoing a cross-country trip in the closed, stale atmosphere of an airplane or being sickened by the smell of a new car’s interior.
People suffering from MCS are invalids of the modern era. They flee from cities to the country, from agricultural areas to wilderness. Many have relocated to the desert southwest. They lead marginal lives, have a difficult time finding a workplace where they can spend eight hours a day, or an employer who will grant all the sick days they need.
Most insurance companies will not recognize their condition and many doctors consider MCS sufferers just so many hypochondriacs. The sad contradiction is that American society is not likely to take multiple chemical sensitivity seriously until more people are burdened with it. Many veterans of the Persian Gulf War now suffer with MCS and have provided the movement with a bloc of determined advocates.
Chemical companies, following the path blazed by the tobacco industry, are busy obfuscating, by funding self-serving research to cloud the issue.
In the world of government regulation, chemical manufacturers don’t have to prove the chemicals they pump into our air and water are safe; they just have to plant doubts, knowing they will be granted the benefit of those doubts.
Invalids of the Modern Era
As if I don’t already have enough to do, I lost control of my senses a while back and agreed to help put together a conference on nature and environmental writing. When organizing a conference, the easy part is lining up the tangible goods: rooms, chairs, lecterns, food. Or so I thought.
As it happens, two of our panelists are afflicted with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, or MCS. Suddenly, organizing the tangibles was a daunting task. Multiple Chemical Sensitivity is the name given to the reaction sufferers have to low levels of many different chemicals. It is a syndrome whose onset is often related to an environmental exposure, most commonly a solvent or a pesticide. While each case is different, a victim is often exposed to a fairly high levels of a chemical and thereafter has symptoms triggered by slight exposure to any one of a number of chemicals.
The symptoms are no fun whatsoever. Irritability, insomnia, difficulty concentrating and remembering, grogginess, fatigue, ringing in the ears, headache, joint pain, muscle pain, abdominal pain and constipation. Added to these injuries is the insult of not being believed. A common reaction to MCS – by someone not afflicted with it – is that the condition is all in the sufferer’s head.
If it were only that simple. Reports of MCS in medical literature date back more than 40 years, to the era when we first started drenching our surroundings in chemicals. It is estimated that 10 to 15 percent of the American public is now afflicted with MCS to some degree and those numbers are rising.
In organizing the conference, I had to become an MCS sufferer by proxy and look at the world through the eyes of one whose movements in the modern world are seriously constrained.
Are the rooms carpeted? Carpets and carpet glues emit volatile chemicals. If there’s no carpet, what is used to clean the floor? How often? How recently? Are there windows that can be opened? Are there curtains on the windows? Have they been dry-cleaned recently? Can an air filter be obtained? If I bring my own, is there a place where I can plug it in? Will I have to pass through an area that has been recently painted?
Imagine the person who indulges too freely in cologne, merely annoying to you or I, but incapacitating to an MCS sufferer. Imagine foregoing a cross-country trip in the closed, stale atmosphere of an airplane or being sickened by the smell of a new car’s interior.
People suffering from MCS are invalids of the modern era. They flee from cities to the country, from agricultural areas to wilderness. Many have relocated to the desert southwest. They lead marginal lives, have a difficult time finding a workplace where they can spend eight hours a day, or an employer who will grant all the sick days they need.
Most insurance companies will not recognize their condition and many doctors consider MCS sufferers just so many hypochondriacs. The sad contradiction is that American society is not likely to take multiple chemical sensitivity seriously until more people are burdened with it. Many veterans of the Persian Gulf War now suffer with MCS and have provided the movement with a bloc of determined advocates.
Chemical companies, following the path blazed by the tobacco industry, are busy obfuscating, by funding self-serving research to cloud the issue.
In the world of government regulation, chemical manufacturers don’t have to prove the chemicals they pump into our air and water are safe; they just have to plant doubts, knowing they will be granted the benefit of those doubts.