Blogger describes emotional response to chemical exposure

Posted on Aug 30, 2008 by Susie Collins in Blog, MCS, Susie Collins

I stumbled on a blog this morning called Today, written by Janelle, who lives in the New England Tablelands in NSW Australia. It’s an incredibly sweet blog, and Janelle’s heart is on every page.

Today she writes about her struggles with chemical sensitivities; it’s a good read about her realization that her tolerance levels are becoming more pronounced. But what I found most fascinating was her description about crying after an exposure. She says about a particularly bad exposure to a chemical in a public toilet, “Alan realised that I wasn’t getting hysterical about it because I was angry…I was trying to explain what happened and that I was having problems breathing and getting the smell out of my hair and the hysterics WAS THE REACTION to the poison.”

You know, I have this happen also: suddenly starting to cry during or after and exposure. As I commented to Janelle: “I wanted to tell you that I have had chemical sensitivities for over 15 years and sometimes one of the side effects of exposure to a toxic chemical is suddenly crying and/or feeling panic. When it’s happening, I am very aware that the emotional responses are being directly caused BY the chemicals, i.e., the emotional response is being triggered directly by the chemical itself, NOT by an emotional response to the exposure.”

Here’s Janelle’s description of the experience:

[...] recently I was bombed 3 days in a row; Michael had a visit to the hair salon and the ‘product’ in his hair was revolting. The next day Alan and the boys decided to shoot deodorant cans with David’s hunting bow…I actually had to go bed, and I was in tears. The third day we went on bushwalk and one of our friends had his smelly boy’s deo on* and the cumulative effect was that I was much slower than the others getting up that climb.

To top it off though, last week on the way home from Sydney, we stopped at a roadside pit toilet, very conveniently put there by the Roads Dept. but an unsuspecting disaster site for me. There had been some kind of (deodorising?) powder put down the pit which was released when urine hit it from above. Great image I know, but I could see it vapourising! To tell the short story though, Alan realised that I wasn’t getting hysterical about it because I was angry…I was trying to explain what happened and that I was having problems breathing and getting the smell out of my hair and the hysterics WAS THE REACTION to the poison. This shocked us both and when I got home I had to ring my friend and tell her about it; not to gossip but as warning – if the same thing happened to her she would likely have collapsed in there!

It is often difficult to get sympathetic responses to these issues because much of the research is anecdotal (and is often documented badly). But personal experience can’t be denied so I am sharing all of this kind of hoping I’m not the only one (I know I’m not) but also to hopefully get you to realise what it can be like for other people.

Link

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tags: Air, Chemicals, Fragrance, Indoor Pollution, MCS, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Stink, Toxic

5 Responses to “Blogger describes emotional response to chemical exposure”

linda

31. Aug, 2008

I feel for all the kids and others who are being told they have behaviour problems and “mental illness” when in fact they are experiencing chemical poisoning and assault.

Reply to this comment
Susie

31. Aug, 2008

Aloha Linda, Thank you for your comment. Your compassion and understanding is wonderful. It’s a crushing feeling to be thought of us “nuts” when experiencing the effects of, as you so eloquently say, chemical poisoning and assault. Talk about adding insult to injury. I am excited about all the new peer reviewed research coming out that shows everyday synthetic crap is POISON. We canaries are not so crazy after all! And the public-at-large may soon begin to wake up!

Reply to this comment
linda

31. Aug, 2008

Am I allowed to have a little rant here?

The fragrance chemical industry must think people are stupid (and maybe we have become so, from breathing in all those neuro-toxins)… On the one hand they are creating huge scent marketing campaigns, to supposedly elicit positive emotions and a release of the purse strings (or maybe a loss of critical thinking skills?) and tv commercials with not just adults, but kids sniffing sprayed surfaces as if they were snorting drugs… and then they try to tell us we are nuts when we experience symptoms of poisoning and being drugged against our will?

Helloooooooooooooo? Is anyone still thinking out there?

Of course, all the kids being diagnosed with mental health and behaviour issues from the neuro-toxic things they are breathing in 24/7, are just put on more chemical pharmaceuticals, to make the industry more money, instead of removing all the causes of the problems.

I am not feeling a lot of compassion for those who perpetuate the poisoning of and suffering in our society so that they can make a profit of more money than they could spend in a dozen lifetimes. It just isn’t right.

We need people to wake up and smell some clean air again!

Reply to this comment
Susie

01. Sep, 2008

Linda, you are welcome to rant here anytime. That’s what canaries & friends do! We RANT very LOUDLY until people LISTEN and ACT.

You really nailed it, your observation is spot on. The fragrance industry is bizarre. The ad campaigns for household fragrance products is TOTALLY bizarre. My favorite is people on hands and knees smelling the carpeting on their FLOOR while looking ECSTATIC.

And the pharmaceutical companies!!! OMG, I’d need to start a whole other blog to go after that industry!

“Being drugged against our will”— yeah, that’s how I feel about it, exactly.

Reply to this comment
linda

02. Sep, 2008

I wonder what kinds of results psychiatric evaluations of those commercial behaviours would elicit?

Another group I’d like to have evaluate those behaviours are the anti-recreational-drug folks.

Doesn’t make sense to me how on the one hand we have all those campaigns telling kids to stay away from mind-altering substances, while on the other hand, commercials are promoting legal (yet neuro-toxic) products that creat similar and possibly more demented mind altered behaviours.

Strange world we live in…

Reply to this comment