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In ancient times, Chinese feng shui masters sensed the subtle energies within and around land, cities, neighborhoods, buildings, room layouts, furniture, and artwork. On the purely physical side, they tasted the water, sniffed the air, and looked at and smelled handfuls of earth to better understand the places their clients were considering for homes, businesses, or other purposes. They examined crops, native plants, and animals. In short, they were masters of the environmental arts and sciences that were appropriate for their times. In America today, we have much more pollution than they had in ancient China. Environmental medical doctors tell me that when our homes, schools, and workplaces continually re-expose us to substances that cause or trigger health problems, even the most skillful medical treatments may take longer or fail. When I inspect the homes of people with allergies, asthma, chemical sensitivities, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, arthritis, and other chronic illnesses, and workplaces where employees frequently miss work or lose productivity due to illness and loss of mental focus, I always find environmental factors that physicians say can trigger those problems. One couple had short-term memory loss. I found that their furnace was putting combustion fumes into their house. "I don’t know if the furnace is causing your memory problems," I told them, "but combustion fumes always contain carbon monoxide. One of the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning is short-term memory loss. Everyone who has an oil, natural gas, propane, or kerosene combustion furnace or heater should have a carbon monoxide detector in their house." I told them to see their doctor immediately, and to call the contractor who installed the furnace. They had to shut off the furnace until it could be fixed. I consulted for a woman who developed severe chronic asthma after starting to use Clorox disinfecting wipes on her kitchen counters and sinks before meals. Their active ingredients are insecticides. Former Chief U.N. Nuclear Weapons Inspector David Kay says it can be difficult to tell whether a substance is a nerve toxin weapon of mass destruction or an insecticide. This is because nerve agents and insecticides can be the same chemicals. Some experts feel that insecticides represent a greater danger to Americans than nerve agents do. I agree. Besides, there are safer, non-toxic, or "low-tox" ways to control insect pests. The "inert ingredients" that make up over 97% of most insecticides are usually petrochemical industrial wastes containing random amounts of various toxins. They are inert only according to a courtroom definition. The truth is that the petrochemical companies and insecticide manufacturing companies usually have no accurate idea of what is in these toxic waste soups, other than that they contain enough oil to keep the insecticides from evaporating. Toxicologists say that when you mix more than two chemical toxins together, no one knows what they will do to "average" people. And the effects on people who take medications, children, pregnant women, and women who want to get pregnant can be very different from the effects on average people. The woman who used the Clorox disinfecting wipes had paid a furnace contractor $900 to rebuild her furnace. My inspection revealed that he did not rebuild her furnace; he also did not tell her that because the furnace was built incorrectly, it was impossible to replace the filters. The filters in that furnace were so old that they were caked with a thick layer of dust and mold. Every time the furnace came on it pumped dust mites, road dust containing soot and petrochemical toxins, and mold spores throughout her house. Doctors say that these substances are known respiratory irritants or toxins that can trigger asthma attacks. An Auburn woman had terminal brain cancer. When her nephew opened the door to let me into the house, I almost refused to go in. The house was filled with the smell of mothballs. The mothballs were 100% pure paradichlorobenzene, which is a carcinogenic (cancer-causing) pesticide. There are safer ways to keep moths out of your clothes. A family in Arlington had severe respiratory problems, headaches, digestive disturbances, and chronic fatigue. The antibiotics, steroids, and other drugs their doctor gave them worked for a few days, then their symptoms returned. The house was filled with a mold odor. Roof leaks from improper repairs were dripping inside the walls, nourishing huge colonies of mold there and in cat waste in the crawlspace under the house. My mycology teacher and two doctors who specialize in environmental medicine taught me that mycotoxins created by some molds can cause or trigger many seemingly unrelated health problems. I have seen people get treatment for their stomachs, then their lungs, then thyroid, then intestines, and so on, until finally someone found that the real problem was exposure to environmental toxins. In such a situation, it’s important to discover the toxins quickly so the doctor knows what the patient is being exposed to and can give proper treatment, and fix the environmental problem to stop the exposure. In the Arlington case, the young daughter had the worst symptoms. She was coughing up blood and had persistent nosebleeds because the capillary walls in her throat and nasal passages were being damaged by something. All molds secrete chemicals that break down cell walls in the things they feed on. The family cat was the girl’s favorite thing in the whole world. He slept on her pillow and she loved to bury her face in his fur. He also spent lots of time in the dirty, moldy crawlspace under the house. He wore a flea collar, and they bathed him in flea shampoo every week. Each time the girl hugged the cat she got mold spores and two insecticides on her hands and face, and in her nose, throat, and lungs. "Call your doctor," I told the parents. "If he is not available, call 911 and ask for the Poison Control Center. Tell them what I have told you about the mold and the insecticides. They should ask you to read part of the labels from the flea collar and the flea shampoo containers, then they will tell you what to do. Then use your common sense and take steps to protect your family." They asked me what I thought they should do. "I am not a doctor," I replied. "I can’t diagnose, give medical advice, or provide treatment. Call your doctor. But I will tell you this: my throat and lungs started closing up the moment I walked into your house. If I lived here my common sense would tell me to move right now. I would wash and rinse all my clothing, sheets, blankets, pillows, pillowcases, and other things in hot water to try to get rid of the pesticides and mold spores. White distilled vinegar will sometimes denature irritating mold proteins. I would keep the cat away from my entire family until all the pesticides are out of his system, and I would never put an insecticide flea collar on him. But remember: the most important thing is to call your doctor now." A woman in Bothell had brain lesions, memory loss, and other serious problems. The Mayo Clinic had not been able to help her. They did not ask whether she had been exposed to insecticides or herbicides. She had been using them for years. She breathed them and got them on her hands, arms, and face. Even one brief exposure to some insecticides and weed killers has caused or triggered serious health problems for some people. My toxicology teacher, the federal Centers for Disease Control, the Poison Control Center, the EPA, the American Lung Association, and the doctors who have taught me all say that continued exposure to most insecticides and herbicides will harm anyone’s health. It is not safe to fool around with these things. In our Pacific Northwest climate we find ecosystems with complimentary plant species living next to each other. Should it upset us if we have balanced little ecosystems in our yards, complete with weeds? Do dandelions and moss harm us in some way? I think that weeds would have to be very dangerous to justify using toxic herbicides that hurt us and our children, pets, and wildlife. Many weeds have clearly documented medicinal uses, and serve as foods for birds and other wildlife. Some moss killers claim that their active ingredient is simply iron. The truth is that Senate Bill 6474, which was signed into law several years ago, allows lawn and garden products to contain arsenic, cyanide, lead, mercury, furans, dioxins, cadmium, and any other kind of toxic waste from heavy industry. And the law says that the labels do not have to list these toxic ingredients. All of the above toxins are cumulative; they collect in peoples’ and animals’ organs and fatty tissues, causing increasing damage. According to the Body Burden Study done by the federal Centers for Disease Control, is appears likely that every American’s body contains enough of these toxins to be of serious concern. Twenty years ago, I fished 200 miles out of the Aleutian island of Dutch Harbor, Alaska, in some of the purest ocean waters in the world. Twelve men on my boat worked sixteen hours every day tossing aside the thousands of fish we caught that had tumors. Pollution is a serious, worldwide issue. Few fertilizer-manufacturing employees know that these poisons are in their products. They only know that they make fertilizer out of the truckloads of "stuff" that comes to them from petrochemical plants and other heavy industries. Many doctors, chemists, public health experts, cities, and counties are actively promoting organic, non-toxic lawn and garden care products. The only way for cities and counties to avoid spending millions of dollars removing chemical toxins from our drinking water is to avoid using the toxins in the first place. Most people assume that if a household or workplace chemical, toxin, or allergen does not cause immediately obvious damage, it is not dangerous. Many products seem safe to us because other people use them and advertisements never reveal the potential dangers. But New York Times bestselling author Doris Rapp, M.D. says that many children’s learning and behavior problems and health issues can be caused by very low level exposure to commonly-used household and school chemicals, dirty furnace ducting, molds, vehicle exhaust, and other toxins. One school in Marysville, Washington makes bus drivers and parents shut off their engines while waiting for children, so the kids and staff members are not exposed to exhaust fumes. It is encouraging to know that so many health problems can be far easier for doctors to treat when exposure to toxins is decreased. The symptoms sometimes disappear when the environment is cleaned up. Compassionate doctors and other health care practitioners are beginning to see how environment can influence health. But to understand how a specific house, apartment, school, or workplace can influence peoples’ health means understanding roofing, plumbing, furnaces, ductwork, air conditioning, foundations, siding interior walls, electrical systems, carpeting, hardwood flooring, basements, crawlspaces, attics, windows, skylights, household and workplace chemicals, vacuum cleaners, paints and stains, and other aspects of building practices and materials. Even buildings that are in perfect compliance with building codes usually have significant environmental flaws that may affect sensitive peoples’ health. Detailed reports from skilled inspectors can help doctors understand their patients’ home, school, and work environments so they can design effective treatments for environmentally related health issues. Author David Abbot is a licensed building inspector with 34 years’ construction and remodeling experience. A former general contractor, for 20 years he has studied how building practices and materials can influence human health. His teachers include an M.D., a toxicologist, several chemists, and EPA and Health Department experts. He is certified to practice and teach feng shui by the Blue Mountain Feng Shui Institute. He can be reached at: (206) 940-6101. |