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WELCOME TO THE CHEMICAL EDGE…

…a site devoted to health issues created by man-made chemicals that have landed us on a precarious ledge where we now teeter over an abyss of disease, death and destruction. A site devoted to solutions, medical, social, environmental, political, to the crisis we’re in. We’re still in our early days, so please bear with us. We welcome suggestions. Meanwhile, let me extend a warm welcome, and an invitation to participate. If you have something to say, or know of some information that should be added to the site, please let me know.

A few words explanation as to the site’s organization. It is, at least for now, in three main sections: Section 1 addresses the grand experiment we’re conducting on the earth and all its inhabitants, and some of the known effects; Section 2 focuses on chemically-induced illnesses, particularly Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS); and Section 3 is a place where solutions will be discussed – what we can do to begin to work our way out of the mess we’re in.

Section 1: THE WORLD IS A GIANT PETRIE DISH

Here’s a newsflash: All of us live on THE CHEMICAL EDGE, to one degree or another, whether we know it or not. Though health officials have so far refused to fully acknowledge it, we are already in the midst of a public health crisis due to chemical pollution.

Some of us, sauntering along the chemical edge, are still, blithely unaware of the dangers, oblivious to the persistent organic pollutants – POPs – circulating in our bloodstreams and attached like time bombs to innumerable receptors on our vital organs. These toxins are our own personal share of the roughly 100,000 man-made chemicals introduced into our environment in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

Yes, even for many of the apparently healthiest among us a nasty fate awaits. Just as strong, healthy trees in a forest continually stressed by drought or acid rain become susceptible to diseases and external assaults they would otherwise resist, even healthy bodies have become overloaded with toxins, and will eventually succumb to a host of environmentally related diseases, dysfunctions and disabilities.

CANCER

A third of us will develop some form of cancer, for example – and that percentage is growing decade by decade. Anyone who tells you this is not environmentally linked is in pathological denial. Devra Davis, the distinguished cancer epidemiologist, reports that in some villages in China, 80 per cent of the population has cancer today. That is an apocalypse here and now, and a sign of how bad things can get.

CARDIOVASULAR DISEASE and ASTHMA

Millions of us will have our lives pre-maturely shortened by cardio-vascular disease resulting from the constant assault of petro-chemically laden particulates spewed by machines, industries, transportation vehicles and generating facilities that use fossil fuels. The macro level – global warming – is mirrored at the micro-level – inflamed and hardened veins and arteries that just can’t do their job anymore. Millions of us are struggling to live with asthma and reactive airways disease and the stress and panic that comes from having to fight for breath.

SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE DISORDERS

Our girls are hitting puberty at age seven or eight, our boys are experiencing delayed adolescence and genital deformations, sperm counts are down by 50% from mid-20^th century, ovarian and breast cancers are at epidemic numbers, and all of it thanks to endocrine-mimicking and disrupting chemicals – the so-called ‘gender-benders’.

LEARNING AND BEHAVIOURAL DISORDERS

Thanks to neurotoxic chemicals, we or our children are dealing with severe cases of attention, learning disorders and behavioural disorders, indeed we are facing autism in 1 out of 100 birth – these disorders fundamentally undermine people’s ability make their way though life in a society where earning an adequate living depends on mental acuity and consistent mental presence. And families that deal with these in their children are often bankrupted, exhausted and destroyed.

DEPRESSION, LUPUS, FIBROMYALGIA, UNRELENTING FATIGUE

Similar levels of hardship and trauma face. additionals millions who are just barely crawling along the chemical edge, felled by soul-crushing depression or acute unrelenting fatigue and the chronic viruses that cause it, or crippled by arthritis and fibromyalgia and lupus so painful that we are basically disabled and in agony much of the time.

MORE CANCER, MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS, MCS

And some of us have already gone over the edge and are just barely hanging on by our fingernails, trying not to fall off as we contemplate the abyss below. We are the ones who already have cancer or multiple sclerosis and are not winning the battle against them. And we are the ones who have severe, life-threatening Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS), which usually come with, or bring about, many of the other diseases I’ve just mentioned.

Section 2: THE SONG OF THE CANARY – MULTIPLE CHEMICAL SENSITIVITIES/MCS

People with severe MCS (to which about one third of this blog is devoted, and from which I suffer at present) live like aliens on planet Earth, struggling every day just to breathe, to find and afford organic food so that what we eat won’t poison us, to wash our clothes in soaps that won’t make us so sick we have to sleep on the floor with our old coat instead of sheets and blankets. Because so many of our environments are laden with chemicals that threaten our ability to breathe and to function physically and mentally – from the supermarket store and its detergent aisle to our aunt’s house with those lethal scented plug-ins – we have withdrawn from society. You won’t see many of us most places, and most of us experience extreme stress from isolation.

Those of us who have found a safe corner (a house without mold or chemicals) are the fortunate ones, though many of us are bankrupt by the time we achieve this goal because our health care systems and insurers won’t pay for our treatments or the special modifications we must make to our housing. Many of us live in trailers or even in old cars or tents, struggling to survive on a rung even lower than the first on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. We are the invisible disability, the new homeless. And because of the politics and economics surrounding our chemical injury, we are also suffering from a conspiracy of powerful resistance that profoundly deepens our isolation and prolongs and exacerbates our illnesses.

While everyone who has health problems related to the environment is a walking (or not) example of the health impacts of THE CHEMICAL EDGE, people with MCS are most like the canaries in the mines of yesteryear: those creatures were more sensitive to deadly mine gases than the miners, and were sent ahead to monitor the air. If the canaries died, the miners knew it was unsafe for them to proceed.

Unfortunately today, though the canaries are sick and dying, trillions of dollars are invested by massive global corporations in a deadly chemical economy that will eventually be the death or deformation of all of us if left unchecked and unchanged. Most of the corporations and plutocrats who run them resist environmental reform, including of medicine and health, with every fibre of their corporate being – though there are some tremendously important exceptions. As result, almost no attention is being paid to the MCS canaries, who have so much to tell us. As a result, our public policy regarding health care and environmental impacts lags decades behind the science and medicine of environmental illness.

So… having fallen from a state of chronic but somehow still functional MCS which, it turns out, I’ve had all my life, into a life-threatening and disabling state, I figure the universe is telling me it’s time I got serious about making people aware that there are canaries in our mines, and they have urgent lessons for us. And as an environmental writer who has long addressed the health impacts of environmental degradation, I want to continue to broadcast the things I learn and figure out on a daily basis. These two mandates are natural companions, and they are what this blog is about.

In the navigation sidebar to the right you’ll see what’s on offer here – or will be as we fill out all our pages and categories. Contributions from various experts and activists will be posted as well as my own views and opinions, published pieces and links. True, a lot of what’s here won’t make for happy bedtime reading. Yes, some of it could give you nightmares. Well, try checking those sections out earlier in the day!

But in order to dissipate both my despair and yours, this blog is also a place where all kinds of solutions will be reported, advanced and explored.

Section 3: DARE TO STRUGGLE, DARE TO WIN

…is a section that will be devoted to life and health affirming solutions – from the macro to the micro scale. So many brilliant, effective, solutions already exist – they just need to be adopted more widely – and so many more are achievable that you’ll be able to read this section before you go to bed, you’ll be able to breathe easy and yes, you’ll have sweet dreams.

The bottom line, as our corporate friends are so fond of saying, is that we are part of our biosphere. There is no “away”, that’s certain. But there is definitely blow-back. And so in this day of biospherical destruction, meaningful citizenship is eco-citizenship, meaningful health is eco-health, meaningful parenting is eco-parenting and meaningful politics are eco-politics – and they’re all related. So welcome to The Chemical Edge, and I hope that you will feel moved to contribute too, to make this discussion rich, lively and informative. Send us your comments, your stories, your facts, your solutions and your links. All are welcome.

Breathe easy, go green,

Varda Burstyn