Poverty and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity
October 15, 2008 by Susie Collins
Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty
Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters to post about the same issue on the same day. The aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. Blog Action Day 08’s topic is POVERTY. Here is my contribution.
Coping with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity is a challenge on every front in a person’s life. It impacts employment, housing, social activity, personal relationships, personal care, eating habits, exercise, recreation, and leisure. Health care becomes confusing and disorienting because medical doctors do not recognize MCS and therefore do not know how to help. To add insult to injury, some MDs believe MCS is psychosomatic, and either dismiss complaints or send the patient off to the shrink.
And when people with MCS are forced to seek out alternative health practitioners, it’s a crap shoot. While most practitioners– acupuncturists, nutritionists, dentists, and others– have good hearts and surely want to help, chances are pretty good that the patient will be led on a wild goose chase, and waste precious financial resources on alternative therapies and supplements, hoping for that magical cure.
But a cure for MCS is most likely going to be elusive. After all, MCS is not a disease or allergy, it’s a reaction to low level poisoning from toxic chemicals. So the more practical course of action might be for the sufferer to find safe housing and employment, stay away from toxic friends and family, dump toxic clothing and replace with natural fabrics, eat organic foods, buy a HEPA air filter and vacuum, find a good water filter, move to a place with cleaner air. But how easy is that course of action for anyone let alone someone who is sick with depleted resources?
So you can see how MCS can catapult a person into poverty. When forced to leave employment because the air is too toxic to breathe, there is no paycheck. When there is no social or familial support system and no safe housing, a person is out on the street. If there’s not sufficient money for fresh organic food, nutritional supplements, air and water filters, and a HEPA vacuum, then a person’s health further deteriorates. And a life on that edge can very quickly spiral into poverty.
This is why too many people with MCS are sleeping in cars or in aluminum trailers in a friend’s back yard. Many who can’t find safe housing or employment hunker down, strip down, go zen, go without, and struggle to adapt to the newfound state of limited resources. This is the world of poverty, and if anyone with MCS thinks this scenario isn’t a heartbeat away, they are fooling themselves. There is no safety net for people with a health condition not recognized by the government or mainstream medical community.
Such is the life of canaries. It’s not just sensitivity to toxic chemicals that people with MCS live with, it’s acute sensitivity to the social injustice of a negligent health care and governmental system that refuses to even acknowledge there’s a problem.
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If you’d like to learn more about Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and poverty, Grist: Environmental News and Commentary covered the topic in 2006.
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Good post. Most of those points apply to anyone with a chronic illness, and invisible chronic illness especially. It’s scary how close to the edge people are living, and MCS sufferers moreso than most. May the day that MCS is recognized as a legitimate problem come soon! (I don’t have it, but I can imagine it’s as frustrating to have your health concerns dismissed for you as it is for me, with fibromyalgia. And that’s without adding in the actual effects of MCS…)
Kitrona, thanks, it was a tough post to write, I struggled with it. Yes, MCS and fibromyalgia have a lot in common on different levels. The lack of a safety net for people with difficult-to-diagnose health problems just makes me wild. I can’t believe what shit health care system and social services we have in this country.
Have you seen Michael Moore’s movie Sicko? I’ll see if I can post the trailer. He makes the case so well: Everybody should have full access to health care and no one should have to worry about ending up in poverty because they are ill!
A post that needed to be made. I hope you don’t mind, but I posted a link to your article at toxboard.com, blackmold, where I’ve been a participant off and on for some time now.
I have been saying, only slightly jokingly, that I have been the proverbial canary for the last 20 plus years.
Thanks for sharing, Deborah! Some interesting discussion at toxboard.
Dear Susie,
Thank you for putting this condition front and centre so succinctly and poignantly. You have hit the nail right on the head on all counts. I have had that all my life and there was no name for it until the past few years. When I was younger I was more resilient, but, at age 68, it’s not so easy. it is a most distressing situation to be in. I have had to fight to be on disability benefits and I struggle daily for a safe place to be. Accommodation is the most important element that remains elusive. Affordable safe housing is non-existent. I have had to move 4 times in 6 years which is stressful and exhausting to say the least.
For those who are afflicted with MCS and/or Fibromyalgia who are reading this, Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada has an Environmental Illness Evaluation program in place. One does need a referral from a doctor to participate and there is a lengthy detailed questionnaire to complete before getting an interview. This brings the condition to the fore front in the medical profession. Good news.
Great article written with care and empathy. Thanks.
Jhannote Thibo
Thank you for your comment, Jhannote. I’m sorry to hear of your struggles.
Thanks for the info on the Environmental Health program at Women’s College Hospital. Here’s the link for anyone who would like to check out the program: http://www.womenscollegehospital.ca/programs/program76.html . I’m going to add it to The Canary Report’s Resource page.
Thanks again. Be well.
beautifully done–
Thank you–
nothing more really needs to be said–
well, I guess that’s not true either; I have come to realize that there are a lot of “layers” to this–
we are so accustomed to being part of a culture with a language; when we find ourselves outside that culture, we have to develop a new way of communicating, and sometimes it is painful–
uncovering the “secrets”, as it were–
I am one of the very blessed ones; my father was a scientist AND had MCS–
he helped me on my path–