Breathing One Breath At A Time

I'm aware of almost every breath I take - and that's because most of the time it hurts to breathe. This discomfort increases or lessens with variations in the air quality in my environment. There are some positive aspects to this: I'm great to have around as an air quality monitor. Unfortunately there are rather too many inconveniences that arise from this situation to balance out the positive, and no one has yet offered me a job as an air quality meter!

Our town is expanding in size at a phenomenal rate, perhaps doubling or tripling in the number of apartment buildings in just the last year alone. In a two-block radius from where we live the number of cranes that can be seen actively involved in constructing new apartments is astonishing. Rapid expansion is the norm almost everywhere today, bringing with it increased activity of all types.

Traffic locally has increased dramatically as the number of households increases. And there are more cars per household because more people need to go to work to sustain the family unit in the face of increased cost of living. Our apartment block car-park is now filled to overflowing, whereas a year ago spaces were easily found at all times.

We live a block away from a large school which is at the end of a dead end road. Four times a day school buses and long lines of cars wait in line to drop children off at the school and then turn around and wait in line to exit the cul-de-sac. Diesel fumes in our neighborhood continue to rise.

Many people still choose to burn their garden refuse outside in small or large bonfires, rather than take it to the dump where it can often be disposed of in a more environmentally friendly manner. The result is that most days, usually for an hour or so, the strong acrid smell of smoke and particles of ash drifts by our apartment building.

The sky blue becomes remote and is filled instead with a brown-orange haze. Trees become less distinct, blurred by haze of pollution. Reflections no longer show bright and dazzling, instead they glow dull yellow.

When the rain and wind comes it clears the air and the sparkling brilliance and wonder of our earth is clear to see again. But with each passing year, the length of time this lasts after a rainfall is becoming less before it builds up and becomes murky from our activities again.

With every breath I take I'm aware of this progression, acutely aware because I'm forced to notice it. As a kid I traveled with my family to many places, experienced many different environmental conditions and inadvertently was exposed to a good number of toxic substances - things that are now coming to be recognized as problematic to the health.

The prolific number of articles being published these days about all kinds of substances used in products that are now being discovered to be harmful to our health is hard to miss. Here's a few about pollution:

1. "Pneumonia 'linked' to Pollution" BBC News, April 14, 2008. Professor George Knox, of the University of Birmingham, wrote in a research report that there were high mortality rates observed in areas with elevated ambient pollution levels. The strongest single effect was an increase in pneumonia deaths, but there were also higher rates of some cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and rheumatic heart disease. Richard Hubbard of the British Lung Foundation said: "What this paper does show, is that there is clear geographical variation in deaths from pneumonia, lung cancer and COPD."

2. "Pollution 'alters brain function'" BBC News, March 11, 2008. A team at Zuyd University in the Netherlands studied the effects of diesel exhaust on humans. They found that after about 30 minutes exposure to diesel fumes the brain displayed (via EEG readings, electrical signals of the brain) a stress response that indicates a change in the way information is being processed in the brain cortex. This effect continued after the people were removed from exposure to the diesel fumes.

The lead researcher, Paul Borm, said "We can only speculate what these effects may mean for the chronic exposure to air pollution encountered in busy cities where the levels of such soot particles can be very high."

The article ends with this startling statement: "But a study of dogs in Mexico found those who lived in highly-polluted Mexico City had brain lesions similar to those seen in Alzheimer's patients, while those who lived in much less-polluted rural areas showed a much lower rate of damage to the brain."

3. "Smog Can Make People Sick, Even Indoors" Scientific American, January 29, 2008. Environmental health scientist Michael Apte of Lawrance Berkeley National Laboratory in California said: "We found that outdoor air pollution, ozone, is associated with symptoms of lower-respiratory and upper-respiratory stress that occur in buildings to workers." Ozone is an air-polluting oxygen molecule O3 which is formed when sunlight interacts with car exhaust.

The article explains: "Sick building syndrome is a term used to describe a broad range of ailments, including dry eye, congestion, difficulty breathing, fatigue and headaches that strike workers inside office buildings but disappear when they leave the premises."

The results from a study of indoor air quality data from 1994-1998 and a survey of office workers in 100 buildings in 37 cities (ranging from the most smog to the cleanest) showed that of the workers surveyed on average, even in buildings with no special history of sickness:

• nearly 19% complained of dry eye
• 21% felt congested on the job
• 4% complained of difficulty breathing
• more than 19% felt fatigued
• more than 15% reported having headaches while at work.

These figures are astounding and illustrate the damage occurring to many people in our society. In this article Michael Apte speculates that the symptoms experienced by people are due to unstable ozone molecules chemically interacting with the wide range of materials found in buildings. Ozone reacts with all types of materials from polyester, plastics, carpet fibres, the skin's natural oil, and many more, to produce toxic chemicals like formaldehyde and other irritants that are far worse than the ozone itself.

The article continues: "In other words, ozone seeping into buildings combines with other chemicals to produce more noxious air."

In addition to the outside air becoming more polluted with traffic, smoke, pesticides and many other substances, the general population is using more and more household chemicals in increasingly higher concentrations.

As it's getting warmer with summer approaching it's becoming tremendously difficult to effectively keep higher concentrations of household chemicals out of our apartment. If our neighbors have their laundry drying on their balconies (and this is a daily common occurrence) then I cannot open our balcony windows without experiencing great difficulty and discomfort breathing due to the laundry detergent and fabric softener chemicals exuding from the clothes.

If our neighbors have their windows open, the strong chemical fumes of laundry detergent with fabric softeners, household cleaning agents and personal grooming products such as perfume are so strong that it's necessary to close the windows to prevent the strong mixture from swamping our apartment.

The following article about the "Health Risks of Fabric Softeners" on the Allergy and Environmental Health Association web site has some disturbing information. They state that fabric softener is the most toxic product sold for daily household use and give the following information about it:

"...a user becomes 'chronically maladapted' to it. The exposure is so constant that it can be difficult to connect the product with the signs of reactivity it causes. Neurostimulant / irritants and central nervous system toxins used in these products are known to produce an addictive-type response that may cause the user to experience a feeling of pleasure when the product is directly inhaled. Regular users of fabric softeners (and perfumes) also often claim they 'can hardly smell it'. This too is an effect of chemical ingredients on neural receptors."

"The product is designed to impregnate fibers and slowly re-release for an extended period of time. That re-releasing affects the health not only of users, but those around them."

On the subject of "Risks of Perfumes and Scented Products" it continues: "The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) collected samples of every perfume sold in North America in 1993. Every sample contained toluene...". The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health lists toluene in their Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards, and the link can be followed to see this in more detail.

There is a list of some of the chemical ingredients found in fabric softeners and of the disorders each of these substances is known to cause. The list is worth reading.

When we first moved into this apartment building just over a year ago the stairwell was cleaned once a week with a relatively mild-scented cleaning detergent. The cleaning detergent has been changed to a more highly scented product which smells very much like the antibacterial strongly scented products that are routinely used in toilets. The stairwell is now cleaned 3 or 4 times a week with an increasingly more concentrated solution of this product.

It's becoming impossible to prevent large amounts of household cleaning chemicals from entering our apartment airflow. Even with large air filters working 24 hours a day the adverse effects are becoming worse and I'm becoming increasingly unable to function in this environment. When driving or walking in the vicinity of our apartments it's possible to smell that the area is encompassed by a cloud of chemicals.

As soon as I leave the area and enter the clean air of the foothills 20 minutes' walk behind where we live my breathing returns to normal and after a while I no longer feel lung pain. When I return to places where there are houses or apartment buildings, the fumes emanating from them cause a return of the burning pain in the lungs. Our apartment building is no exception to the norm, even passing cars leave a trail of scent from perfumes and scented products of their owners behind them.

As the intensity of the chemicals increases with the oncoming summer heat, I'm becoming more and more unwell at home. I'll have to spend much of my day outside in the cleaner air in the hills away from my home in order to reduce my exposures to these chemicals, to avoid becoming ill all the time and to try to prevent becoming even more sensitive to them.

If I'm not at home I can't paint egg tempera paintings as a full-time occupation. I had been hoping to create enough paintings to set up for an exhibition, and in time, earn enough money to be able to afford to live in a small house where I wouldn't be at the mercy of others' choices in cleaning habits.

It's frustrating beyond expression to be perfectly well in clean fresh air, but to essentially find myself poisoned in my home environment. I was hoping to get ahead with the artwork before our environment became prohibitive to my ability to function. I haven't given up, but it's becoming more and more difficult.

I wish, by sharing this information, that maybe more people can perhaps benefit from my experience and avoid having to reach this point. Even eliminating a few of these products from our daily lives can make a huge difference in how energetic and good we feel.

The cumulative impact of our choices can have a very high price in the future quality of our lives and those of our children. I wonder what it will take for us as a society to really understand the extent of the damage we're inflicting on ourselves and the wildlife around us. If you'd like to see more on chemical sensitivity, pollution, cleaning agents and the effects they're having, click here to see previous DweezelJazz posts on these topics.