I’ve never experienced anything more terrifying than waking up at 3:00 AM, unable to breathe. I wondered if I should have left instructions for someone to know where my important things are kept, just in case I didn’t make it through the night. Then I wondered if I should have deleted embarrassing things from my computer. The worst thing is the thought of dying all alone with no one to whom I could confess my last thoughts. One of the most difficult things about my disease is that I look healthy on the outside. I would love for the doubters of my illness to be right. It would be so much easier if my illness was all in my head, in my imagination. It’s as though I have a secret desire to be mentally ill instead of physically ill. Each time I am confronted with my triggers, I hesitate, hoping against hope that it is not really happening, that I am not really being slowly tortured by my environment. As I gasp for the next elusive breath of air, in that most frightening difficult moment, I wonder how I could ever have doubted that my illness is real! But I am always alone in my suffering. My desire to be just like everyone else always brings me back to the hope that it could just be my imagination or that I am exaggerating it all, as I believe some people think. As my air passages close, I reach for my inhaler, trying desperately to calm my mind. I imagine that most people believe asthma is just an annoying inconvenience that can always be overcome with a couple of sprays from that little plastic tube. But I have come close enough to imagine what it will be like if that little plastic tube should ever fail me!  

I’ve recently come to the realization that greed is the major motivator behind many who deny the existence of my disease! No one wants to take responsibility for the toxic soup that triggers my most serious bouts of asthma, my severe headaches, sinus and upper respiratory infections. I have watched over the years as powerful lobbyists have persuaded politicians to alter regulations and emasculate regulatory agencies to allow “corporate persons” to continue to make profits at the expense of my health. Deniers of climate change argue that it cannot be proven that man-made carbon emissions are responsible for “imagined” future consequences. But there are literally millions upon millions of us who are invisible testimonials to the immediate effects of humankind’s indifference to the damage unregulated commerce can do. For us, the toxic sea has already risen above the walls and over the dikes to suffocate us in the present moment. 

I call my most recent struggle “The China Syndrome.” In the beginning there were isolated incidents that were almost too absurd for even me to believe. A portable coat rack in a closet, with toxic plastic wheels that made it impossible to breathe each time I opened the closet door. A refrigerator with a toxic plastic water catcher mounted above the motor so it off-gassed each time the refrigerator came on, rendering the kitchen uninhabitable. A toxic electric extension cord. A toxic backpack that triggered an asthma attack. Toxic shower curtains that had to be washed ten times and rinsed in vinegar before they were usable. A blender with a plastic chassis that offgassed each time the motor warmed up. A portable heater with a plastic frame that filled the room with the smell of hot plastic each time it was used. All of these items had one very clear common denominator: they were MADE IN CHINA!

I was proud to have been one of the first to declare my intent to buy Made in America whenever possible. My default position was anywhere but “Made in China!” 

It is now six months since I set out to create my ivory tower where I would be able to live in a toxic free environment. The first thing on my agenda was to get rid of the carpeting in my living space, replacing it with a material that would be nontoxic. The first thing out of my mouth everywhere I went shopping was, “where is it made?” The second thing out of my mouth was, “I don’t want anything made in China!” I found a laminate floor that was made in America and took special care to be sure the underlay was nontoxic. The floor installer gave me a window of time in which he was available to do the install. On the installer’s first day, when I went to pay for the flooring, I was told it was on back order for six weeks. I asked for something comparable. In my haste I forgot to ask the vital questions again, assuming I had already made an impression on the salespersons. When they offered a flooring with an attached underlay, I was hesitant, asking about toxicity. The salesperson handed me a sample and told me it was absolutely not toxic. I held the sample up to my nose and smelled nothing. But still I was not satisfied. I asked the installer to tell me if the underlay on the floor smelled toxic when he opened the new boxes. He assured me the floor and underlay did not smell. 

After the floor was installed, I bought two pieces of wood furniture. When I asked the salesperson where they were made, he told me they were from a Southern California company that they’ve used for decades, leaving me to understand the furniture was made in Southern California.

Weeks later I began to get sick, especially on hotter days. Each day my illness got worse. Then I noticed a strong odor coming from the wooden  china cabinet, It smelled like insecticide. I moved the china cabinet into the garage and my symptoms improved slightly. Then I noticed a similar smell coming from the wooden TV console. I moved it to the garage with the china cabinet and my symptoms improved slightly again, except now my garage was toxic. 

A couple of weeks passed without much change in my illness. Then the weather changed and another hot spell arrived. My symptom worsened daily. My breathing became so labored I had to move out and stay with friends. My eyes were burning as if someone had peeled an onion directly under my nose! My chest was heavy, my lungs ached and it was impossible for me to take a deep breath. My friend Mary suggested we take up one of the floor boards in the closet, to see if the underlay on the flooring was also toxic like the furniture. It smelled like turpentine! I checked the leftover box of flooring in the garage and sure enough the label said “Made in China!” The new boards remaining inside the box were extremely toxic.  

I called the furniture store to ask if I could get a refund. They informed me that I was unable to get a refund, only a store credit. They denied ever implying the furniture was NOT made in China! When I had the flooring removed, the toxicity had leached into the 40 year old plywood sub floor. It took 5 weeks and an industrial ionizer to finally get the odor out of the sub floor. The entire ordeal lasted four months and put a severe strain on my lungs and my immune system, not to mention my mental health!

By no means am I looking for sympathy. In reality I feel sorry for those who do not have my so called sensitivity, because they have no chance to save themselves. I am appalled whenever I hear someone dismiss this controversy by saying: “we all have to die of something!” My horror, when hearing those words, comes from having watched those who have literally suffered years or even decades in absolute agony from man-made diseases. And every day I struggle to survive by avoiding exposure, I become more and more aware of the fact that the driving force behind this preventable suffering is greed!    

Webster’s Dictionary defines greed as : a selfish and excessive desire for more of something than is needed. Most people today immediately think of banks, Wall Street, politicians, big corporations and power hungry billionaires like the Koch Brothers as the driving forces behind greed in America today. But my series of unfortunate circumstances in recent months has forced me to look at the side of greed that is seldom if ever mentioned with regard to the unprecedented decline of quality of life in America today. This particular manifestation of greed, in my mind, holds the key to saving us all from complete ruin! The one element of greed we have the power to change is the greed of the American consumer who has been convinced that cheap is better, even if it kills you or makes you sick! 

Make no mistake! I am not implying that the banks, Wall Street, politicians, big corporations and power hungry billionaires like the Koch Brothers should not also take personal responsibility for their part in the dumbing down of the “average person on the street.” It is unfair to say that “the market provides what people want” when those people are bombarded with advertising day and night, 24/7! It is also unfair to claim that the whole world is irreversibly interdependent now, while the environment, quality of products, wages, working conditions and product safety have all suffered because of so called globalization and free trade. It’s hard to explain why I should be forced to buy a fruit that was picked too green on the other side of the world when I could get a juicy ripe one grown just a few miles away! It is insane to rationalize cutting down timber in the American Northwest, cutting it into boards, loading them onto container ships and sending them to China where they are processed into goods that are then shipped back to America soaked with toxic unregulated chemicals that endanger the lives and health of American consumers.  

I’ve had these moments before in my life. They are moments when everything becomes crystal clear. The truth becomes undeniable. In this particular moment I realize that most of the people I’ve been dealing with don’t really care if I live or die. They are totally invested in fear, greed or legal self-preservation. Although I often feel totally alone in my struggle, I know there are millions of people who understand my plight from a very personal perspective. They live in places like  West Virginia. When they turn on their faucets they are able to set the water on fire. But their particular anecdotal stories threaten the existence of a very rich and powerful energy industry that pays for the pro fracking commercials at the beginning of the online segments of the Rachel Maddow Show. 

There are people living near giant factory livestock farms who also understand my plight. They live in the daily stench of manure and urine that pollutes the water supplies and air with dangerous chemicals, microbes and drug resistant bacteria. Their stories threaten the powerful factory farming industry. 

They call our stories anecdotal, saying we cannot prove the connections between our suffering and their actions. But they know that anecdotal stories are the foundation of the scientific proof they claim we do not posses! So they lobby against collection of data that would help victims and implicate industry. They demand scientific studies and data to back up our claims while behind the scenes they do everything in their power to keep that scientific data and research from being collected or funded in the first place!

I am 100% sure that I am slowly being asphyxiated by the 21st century world I am forced to live in each day when I waken to a new sunrise. The label they want to attach to me is Multiple Chemical Sensitivity! But I vehemently reject that label because it is designed to put the responsibility on me instead of everyone who manufactures, sells, buys and uses toxic materials. Perfumes, scented candles, (air-fresheners) which are really air pollutants, clothes dryer sheets, laundry detergents, glues used in building materials, carpets and carpet pads, plastics and cosmetics and other body products are filled with unregulated poisons that are known to be harmful and even deadly, but continue to be manufactured, sold, bought and used because corporations own our government and our media. 

I am at the stage in my disease now where my air passages close when I am exposed to triggers. I often leave restaurants when someone doused with perfume sits nearby. Sometimes the food gets caught in my esophagus and I begin to choke, unable to breathe. I cannot deny the feeling that I am most often seen as the problem instead of the victim

Here is what I know as the canary in the coal mine. The employees of places like Abercrombe and Fitch will one day file a class action suit against their employers for forcing them to work in an environment that is slowly killing them. That includes places that stock scented candles by the thousands, where employees say they gets used to headaches after the first few weeks. The world around me has gone totally insane! That world expects me to crawl away somewhere and be silent, because someone else likes their toxic perfume and thinks their freedom is being infringed if I tell them they might kill me. 

Asthma among children is not epidemic because that’s the evolution of the human species. It’s epidemic because these children grow up in a toxic soup instead of fresh air. We have screwed up big time, and every time the subject of how we have screwed up comes up, we are told that the free market and profits are more important than life itself! Well, this is my life that is being threatened! I have the right to defend myself!  

We need to bring jobs back to America and regulate the industries to protect the workers, the environment and the consumers! We need to pay our workers decent wages so they can buy their own goods. We need to start making things that cost more and last longer. 

And more than anything else, from my perspective, we need to finally hold the advertising industry responsible for the damage they have inflicted on the quality of life in the United States Of America. PR firms that convince people to vote against their own interests, that promote products they know are dangerous, are criminals!