Summary-line: 2-May wilcox@cis.ohio-state.edu # *** EOOH *** Return-Path: Date: Thu, 2 May 91 13:08:20 -0400 From: Patricia P Wilcox To: 34AEJ7D@cmuvm.bitnet, bitter@allegro.tti.com, cnorman@weber.ucsd.edu, immune@weber.ucsd.edu, wilcox@cis.ohio-state.edu PLEASE POST TO THE IMMUNE MAILING LIST! _______________________________________________ On Tue, 30 Apr 91 11:40:23 PDT you said: Date: Thu, 02 May 91 10:15:54 EDT From: 34AEJ7D@cmuvm.bitnet Organization: The Village Subject: Re: chemical sprayed in office To: bitter@allegro.tti.com (Bitter), cnorman@ucsd.edu >>chemical free. I'm not thinking very clearing right now, but would >>appreciate any advice about this. I am not interested in any kind of >>legal action - I just want to find a way to deal with this. >By thus restricting your alternatives your chances of getting anyone to >listen to your complaints are, IMHO, very, very slim at best. >>about such problems? Gotta go now, and I think I may have to take the >>rest of the day off. Any advice will be appreciated. >We have encountered similar problems. In general, management at any site >tends to regard single-individual complaints as being from "trouble makers". >We only got action when we finally identified *several* people who were all >similarly impacted. OK, here's what you do. This will only work for those of you who are lucky enough to still be able to work, and who can find three or more people with the same problem in one company. Write to: Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Public Health Service Center for Disease Control National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Room 532, U.S. Post Office Cincinnati, OH 45202 and request their booklet, "The Health Hazard Evaluation Program of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health." In the back of the booklet is a form, "Request for Health Hazard Evalua- tion", OMB No. 68-R1236. This is supposed to be filed by an "authorized representative of employees." In practice, this means that if at least three employees request an investigation, NIOSH is required to investi- gate, whether or not the request comes from a formal employee advocate group. You're allowed to check a box that says "I do not want my name revealed to the employer," if you're worried about retribution by management. Send the completed form to: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Hazard Evaluation Services Branch U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Cincinnati, OH 45202 I have not done this myself for a couple of reasons: 1) I can't convince three people from my former workplace to support this petition. Two, but not three. Even though I know about a dozen sick people there. 2) Given the way NIOSH and the CDC have been falling all over their own feet on this thing, I don't think there's anyone qualified to do a meaningful investigation. So I'm doing my own investigation, and when I have incontrovertible proof of what's going on, I'll try talking (again!) to NIOSH, the CDC, the EPA, Ralph Nader, and every- one else I can think of. I'm virtually certain, based on about a cubic foot of medical reprints and talking to hundreds of people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Chemical Hypersensitivity and Autoimmune Disease, that the problem will turn out to be that methyl isobutyl ketone (the solvent in Sanford Expo Dry Erase whiteboard markers) is destroying an enzyme related to gluta- thione metabolism. There are many other chemicals that can do this, too, but MIBK is the one that millions of us have been exposed to daily. In the absence of normal glutathione levels, chemicals that would normally be rendered harmless are allowed to run wild, causing all sorts of damage. By the way, MIBK is on the EPA's list of 17 most dangerous toxic chemicals in the environment (this comes from the TSCA -- toxic substance control act -- group at the U.S. EPA). Verification of this hypothesis could be done by epidemiological studies, but a more certain way would be to expose laboratory rats to MIBK and look for enzyme abnormalities. Mice won't do -- they tend to be fairly resistant to these problems. If you write to NIOSH, you might give them my name as a resource, since it's taken me years to figure all this out, and they may as well not start from scratch all over again. The interpretation of clues in the existing medical literature is difficult unless you have some meaningful hypothesis to guide the search -- and current researchers have a notable dearth of hypotheses. --Pat Wilcox (wilcox@cis.ohio-state.edu)