Environmental Illness Archives - EMFSA

The Invisibility of Environmental Illness

Editor — Sat, 18 Jul 2020 12:50:44 +0000

Source https://the1a.org/segments/the-invisibility-of-environmental-illness/?fbclid=IwAR0_-qnsyI7481SDoMbPp4epZ7KJ0rL0YryM4gvDUbQnLL7_6JJNjluatXQ

What if you were only able to leave a room once a year?

People with environmental illnesses suffer from extreme sensitivities to chemicals. And the medical community has been slow to recognize something from which millions of Americans suffer.

What is known about these mysterious illnesses? And what support is available for people who experience them?

GUESTS

Oliver Broudy: journalist; author, “THE SENSITIVES: The Rise of Environmental Illness and the Search for America’s Last Pure Place”

Dr. Ann McCampbell: environmental health consultant and chemical sensitivity advocate.

Listen to the discussion: https://the1a.org/segments/the-invisibility-of-environmental-illness/?fbclid=IwAR0_-qnsyI7481SDoMbPp4epZ7KJ0rL0YryM4gvDUbQnLL7_6JJNjluatXQ

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“Living, Leben, Vivre (LiLeVi) – Unique Together” : An international online survey for people looking for a healthy working and living environment

Editor — Sat, 04 Jul 2020 16:06:58 +0000

Image: The colourfulness stands for the neurodiversity of people and the multiple coloured threads per strand, for the various different characteristics of an individual. The tightness of the knot indicates that we want to bring everyone together, for exchange and for common cohesion, and at the same time give space to each person and their individual needs.
Image credit: Pia Beyer-Wunsch

What do electro – and chemical sensitive, or health conscious people want for their homes and workplaces?

The survey is for people who encounter barriers in their lives due to environmental factors. Many of them have special sensitivities or allergies, intellectual giftedness or sensory processing skills that make them perceive stimuli from their environment in unusual ways. They often experience much higher intensity in perception to the outside world and its stimuli.

With the survey the team in Germany wants to take a first step in creating positive opportunities so that neurodiverse people e.g. with Electrosensitivity or MCS can live healthy, financially independent lives and take their space in the job market with joy.

The survey is meant for everybody who:

•offers housing or

•is looking for housing, or who

•offers jobs or

•is looking for work in unusual environmental settings, e.g. no Wi-Fi, free of fragrance and the like.

Accessibility for those with environmental illnesses:

Environmental illnesses are increasing rapidly and consequently the need arises for workplaces and living spaces to take into account sensitizing substances and physical agents.

In an interdisciplinary project of the DHBW Stuttgart, students of the computer science course in cooperation with the Center for Empirical Research (ZEF) are working on solutions for people who have environmental-related diseases such as multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) or electrosensitivity (EHS). It is all voluntary work without external funding, because of the urgency of the situation that MCS and EHS people face.

The mix of chemicals that people are exposed to today ranges from carpeting adhesives, disinfectants, wood preservatives and mold to evaporation from furniture, computers and printers. Sensitive people can get sick from these substances as well as from electrosmog.

The importance of the survey:

The purpose of the study is to listen to the people and to make them visible as a large group worldwide.

With results of the survey politicians, municipalities and social housing initiatives can be approached – providing an opportunity for all of us to publically discuss pollutant free housing and jobs.

The survey will provide valuable input for political work so that the group of EHS and MCS people become visible as a large group.

We need as many as possible to participate in the survey, it only takes 10 – 20 minutes.

This is an international survey and is available in English and German. Please forward the information to others.

Link to survey:

https://ww3.unipark.de/uc/2020_PA_JHecke/e36e/ospe.php?qb

Info:

https://www.emfsa.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Survey_EHS_MCShousingWork-1.pdf

The survey is supported by the Ecological-Democratic Party (ÖDP Brandenburg):

The environment can make you sick: Arranging housing needs and jobs for special needs.

The ÖDP Brandenburg welcomes the IT initiative “Living, Leben, Vivre (LiLeVi) – unique together” at the Stuttgart Cooperative State University to develop an online placement platform for living spaces or workplaces with accessibility for people with environmental disorders.

With a population of “allergy sufferers” at 30% already and increasing environmental illnesses, the need arises for safer workplaces and living spaces, not only questioning levels of “toxicity”, but also taking into account sensitizing substances in the sense of “accessibility for the environmentally ill”.

https://www.oedp-brandenburg.de/aktuelles/pressemitteilungen/nachrichtendetails/news/umwelt-kann-krank-machen-vermittlung-von-wohnbeda/?fbclid=IwAR3AhksRXNbKJl1uprYH8Ghhma0-XLWK4VDJc0LV7T7UPRriPjOY37Vd6hc

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Dr. Lisa Nagy S. 2080 Medical Training & Insurance Bill Nov. 28, 2017

Editor — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 14:30:22 +0000

Dr. Lisa Nagy,Government Liaison for the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, discusses the illnesses she herself experienced from environmental toxins including EMFs, the patients she sees today, as well as treatments that all medical practitioners should be trained on.

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The Hidden Marginalization of Persons With Environmental Sensitivities

Editor — Tue, 23 May 2017 09:45:21 +0000

Gibson Pamela Reed. Ecopsychology. June 2016, 8(2): 131-137. doi:10.1089/eco.2016.0003.

Published in Volume: 8 Issue 2: June 27, 2016 http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/eco.2016.0003

Abstract

This paper constructs persons with environmental sensitivities as comprising a hidden, marginalized group in technological culture that is paying a large price for our industrialized lifestyle. Due to the polluted nature of most public venues, this population is robbed of a sense of “place” necessary to maintain personal relationships. This population is marginalized by health-care providers and shunted into mental health categories, as our current health paradigms are not adequate to frame and categorize health problems caused by our toxic industrial lifestyle. The problem is discussed within the context of the pressures of capitalism, and examples are given of persons with environmental illness receiving mental health diagnoses (an attempted colonization) when they attempt to access mainstream health-care providers who lack knowledge or expertise regarding toxic-induced illness.

Link: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/eco.2016.0003

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Electrosensitivity – an Environmental illness, an Authentic Diagnosis, not a Delusional Disorder

Editor — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 21:29:54 +0000

A letter by Dr Andrew Tressider, January 2017

To my Medical Colleagues, GPs, Psychiatrists, Neurologists and others:

Electrosensitivity – an Environmental illness, an Authentic Diagnosis, not a Delusional Disorder

Summary:

Electrosensitivity is the symptomatic sensitivity to Electric or Magnetic Fields of any frequency, including RadioFrequency (RF or Microwave) transmissions. As a symptomatic condition, it is becoming common due to the increasing environmental pressure on human biology. The source is pollution from wireless and other EM fields. Doctors as yet rarely recognize it due to educational issues. Safety always lags technological advance. There are barriers to recognition of harms. Current UK Advisory Safety Limits are based upon the outdated and disproven myth that Non-Thermal means Non-Harmful. Society and organizations have yet to fully travel the road from ‘there isn’t a problem’, ‘there might be a problem but it’s very small’ to ‘there is a problem’. Society does not recognize humans as electromagnetic beings, as well as physical bodies needing careful nutrition to maintain health. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of people suffer, often ignored or dismissed because society doesn’t yet appreciate the issue, and doctors have no answers. Electrosensitivity is soundly supported by both biology and physics.

You may be being consulted by a person who has this under-recognised condition.Thank you for reading this. It provides information that you may not easily find elsewhere. Electrosensitivity (ES) is a condition first described in 1932, and is when a person’s physiology is affected by external Electromagnetic (EM) fields, giving rise to a typical spectrum of symptoms, often neurological. It is therefore an illness caused by environmental agents – essentially an environmental toxic pollutant. Electrophobia is a fear of EM fields, and is a nocebo driven response. Symptoms of fear or paranoia about any agent, circumstances, person or issues can be part of a psychiatric condition, and may be part of a delusional state which will have other features. ES is completely separate from any delusional condition and from Electrophobia. ES is a condition that can arise due to continued exposure to an environment polluted by man-made EM and RF (radio-frequency) wireless signals at levels at orders of magnitude below heating effects, and is well understood in Russia. Symptoms include headaches, fatigue, disturbed sleep, tingling, pains in limbs, head or face, stabbing pains, brain-fog and impaired cognitive function, dizziness, tinnitus, nosebleeds, palpitations and others.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, (now known to be partially a failure of mitochondrial function) was initially difficult to diagnose and indeed dismissed by some as psychological illnesses. I have written this briefing sheet to summarise my understanding of ES in case you wish to consider it in your differential diagnosis.

My qualifications for this are as follows: I trained at Guy’s Hospital, and have been a GP since 1989, seeing a wide range of Primary Care Practice. I have a special interest in Health and Well Being, both physical, psychological and emotional, and have studied this whilst working with my patients. I seek to give the best of orthodox diagnoses and treatment, and also recognise other factors that contribute to and may maintain ill health, in order to eliminate them if possible. I have a wide-ranging interest in factors that affect health. I work for NHS Somerset CCG as a GP Patient Safety Lead, where I have done a number of Investigations into Root Causes, for the University of Bristol as an Examiner and Educator and former Somerset Academy GP Lead, and am approved under the Mental Health Act as a Section 12 Doctor. I teach Doctors on Health and Self-Care on behaIf of the BMA and in Somerset Hospitals and wider afield.

I am also a trustee of the charity ES-UK, which post has given me access to more information and research about the condition than many clinical colleagues, and in this I have consulted scores of people (at no charge) with electrosensitivity, severe enough to impact badly upon their lives.

My Experience: As a Section 12 Approved Doctor under the Mental Health Act, I have been involved in at least 400 Mental Health Act Assessments over ten years, and have good relationships with our excellent Somerset Psychiatrists. In all of the assessments I have done, though I have seen many patients with paranoia or delusional states including reference and being watched from the television and the like, I have never seen anyone with ES during an MHAA.

I have however, separately (i.e. not in Mental Health Act Assessment settings) seen patients whose symptoms are reliably caused by exposure to Electromagnetic fields, especially RF (Radiofrequency) transmitting technology, but also by EM Fields and by Dirty Electricity (for an explanation see below). It is only too easy, as I know from my medical career, to make a diagnosis only from the choices within the medical framework that we have learnt about, often years ago, especially when faced with a condition whose aetiology we cannot explain. See link for more:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5tb34c3rC9SYk5qYndxNENfODg/view

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