(note...not yet edited or spell checked...if you're touchy or obsessive, read at your own risk.)

(note...mar, 06...organizational work for the information on environmental illness and the structure of the EI Standard is ongoing. Consult also the Environmental Illness listing in our Resource Files for texts on specific subjects)

 (This treatise on environmental illness and its linked, supporting documents are in development. They are posted here in unfinished form because of the demand for information. Understand the text is provisional and check back later for completion and updates. Eventually, they will be moved to the Smart Shelter Resource Files (see our home page for access and links).

What is Environmental Illness.... In the past 100 years, modern technology has modified the environment in which we live with polluntants and chemistry foreign to the thousands (millions) of years in which our immune systems have evolved. The result is "the disease of the 21st centruy" ...multiple chemical sensitivity...Environmental Illness....now at epidemic stages and escallating.

Modern medicine treats the body with little regard to the environmental elements behind the maladies diagnosed as chronic fatigue, attention deficit disorder, allergies, fibro-myalgia, multiple sclerosis and cancer. How much sense does it make to bandaid escallating symptoms with mind-numbing chemical perscriptions and send the patient back into the chemical soup which caused them?

The term (and practice) of Environmental Illness takes us into the realm of causes and adds a level of treatment beyond modern chemical medicine, addressing the wholistic system in which we live. It often uses the informed and recovering E.I. (one who has Environmental Illness) as the diagnostic tool itself.

Since cures for E.I. do not (and may never) exist...attention is paid to preventing its debilitating threshold for those willing to credence the warnings...through the experiences and indicator reactions of the E.I. community itself as the only non-biased, highly accurate sensors for the dangers of fragrances, solvents, building materials, detergents, lotions, herbacides, pesticides and non-organic food products in which we swim. (click here for more detailed explanation: "What is Environmental Illness?"

EI's are people with environmental illnesses. We live in a chemical soup and for many of us..."living did not get better with chemistry"...it got decidedly worse. Environmental toxins (herbicides, pesticides, fragrances, solvents, cleaning products, food ingredients) underlay many of the rampant and escalating immune disorders such as cancer, chronic fatigue, attention deficit disorder, fibro-myalgia, epstein barr, multiple sclerosis, hay fever and are the explaining ingredient for sudden onset and bizarre allergies and aversions (we have one EI in Paonia who is allergic to commercially packaged chicken...go figure). Often labeled "crazies" the EI community and its rapid expansion (EPA now knows 27 % of Americans suffer from some level of EI and the World Health Organization says its 15% at a minimum) are explained by the powerful capabilities of modern chemicals to dismantle and destroy not only our cell structures, but also our DNA itself...which accounts for the fact of a now significant percentage of children born with immune/chemical disorders despite the fact they have had no exposure to them.

Environmental Illness/ Multiple Chemical Sensitivity are long-recognized legitimate diseases by the Social Security Administration, the Veterans Administration, the American Medical Profession....and certainly by the professions we classify as "alternative healers" (mainly because it was through these practitioners that early research and treatment of these maladies was effected...during the era when the chemical industry spent millions each year to keep these damages under wraps). Now that information about EI is universally available and most medical practitioners at least know about and recognize it (although their treatment regimens in this country remain painfully lacking) the task confronts us to diagnose, treat, house and detoxify this population of our country and others.

The link at the title heading for this section will take you to the greater resource file being assembled by Smart Shelter dealing with EI and the recommended standard for remediative livestyle...substitutes for all the chemical products you've been raised with and now can't use (or shouldn't)...called the EI Standard.

Many people at the extremes of chemical sensitivities seek housing in old, out gassed homes or trailers they can afford and can cleanse to a tolerable level of toxicity to allow them to live safely. Most are, by the time they solve the riddle of their malady and effect remediation, stripped of financial resources and not employable in most jobs demanding exposure to workplace toxins or the public wearing fragrances, hair dyes, lotions and the like. Even with a safe home in tact (which takes years to create) the problem of where to put it safe from herbicides, chimney smoke, auto exhaust, etc remains.

The potential solution under development with the Smart Shelter Nomad Project is to develop the "Micro Habitats" for safe occupancy by EI's and others, augment their mobility and to develop programs on private and public lands where exchanges of rent or possible income are effected allowing safe places for the EI to live (these areas have to be excluded from toxic treatments such as herbicides and pesticides) while the EI provides labor force for land care and irradication of invasive species, etc...augmenting their employability, giving them new confidence and a feeling of effectiveness and value for something they can do and which they know is helping turn a contaminated world around through return to saner methods of dealing with the problems we create.

Selections for location of the prototype "Micros" such as the Smart Shelter Nomad are done on the basis of finding sites (public and private) where pollution is minimal and cooperation of the owners or public lands managers can be obtained guaranteeing no herbicides or pesticides will be introduced. The EI then undertakes remediation of existing land damages and hand irradication of invasives and renutrienting and replanting of the infested areas...providing a win-win-win situation for the EI, the land owner/manager and the environment.

what causes it

The Levels of EI

Symptoms and Other Diagnosis

It does not exclude or compete with mediciane, but adds an explanatory level to address and remediate causes

Environmental Medicine

En Terra Science

EMF- Electro-Magnetic Fields

How can I tell If my children or I have it?

How can I protect myself from getting it?

What can I do If I think I have it?

What are the long term effects of having it

Public Health concerns and actions to protect us all..those who have...and those who will have E.I.

Programs that work

How can I create a healthy home for myself, my family and my guests

How can I create a healthy workspace

How can I encourage (or insist) on healthy public spaces

Why hasn't the government done anything about this

What has happened to all the testing and safeguards we all thought would protect us from toxins like these

Why does the conventional medical profession know so little about this

What are the dangers of taking perscriptions for environmental illness...and doing nothing about the causes

How can I find knowledgable EI's to help me

I just get paranoid thinking about all this...isn't that just making matters worse?

Isn't all this EMF/ Electromagnetic field stuff just a bunch of new age wingnut paranoia?

How can a child be born with EI and never have been exposed to this stuff?

How do you live with someone who has E.I.?

How can I get my doctor and insurance company to pay attention?

What If I become totally disabled?

Is there any cure...what about recovery

EI Networks and action groups...resources

The EI Standards- Living With the Solutions

(note- where indicated ...numbers within parenthises: (2) ... resources numbered and described in the E.I. Standard Bibliography are referenced here.)

(Notes appearing in italics and without parenthesis reference numbers are comments from the Smart Shelter case studies themselves)

...For a healthy home

Mold/Mildew- mix a solution of vinegar and water...spray it on and wipe it off (2).

Best removal of mold and mildew is with dobbing on hydrogen peroxide. Most eis react to chlorine bleach which is not recommended. Ozonation of the interior is recommended, but only if all damageable objects, plants and pets (including the human ones) are removed as ozone...despite manufacturer lies.. is highly allergenic and toxic. Ozone saturate the interior with an ozonator when it is sealed off and let set 1-24 hours. Ventilate thoroughly before reoccupation. Doing this regularly allows mold/mildew inhibition through wall coverings and into difficult and unseen spaces. Try and watch for reduced allergenic reactions to evaluate. Owning an ozonator is recommended for E.I.s

Carpet Cleaning and Deodorizing- sprinkle pure unscented baking soda liberally (it will look like snow) onto the carpet...let it set and vacuum away to deodorize. To brighten and clean the carpet mix 1 quart vinegar and 3 quarts boiling water, applying with a rag. Odor will disappear with drying, do not oversoak to the backing at the risk of mold or mildew developing. (2)

Insects- a pyrethrin powder can be made (or bought) from chrysanthemums by gathering blossoms when two or three outer rows of petals have appeared and sun drying them. Grind into a powder. Disolving in alcohol and filtering poweder through a coffee filter will produce a spray for roaches, flies, fleas, beetles, lice and snarling cats. Ants can be dealt with by sprinkling powdered red chili pepper, paprika, or dried peppermint. Planting mint or tansie outside the house will repell them. (2)

My father used to shoot the flies off of cabin walls with a 22 caliber rifle for target practice. This will increase fresh air circulation in the average micro. Ammunition prices are escallating, though.

 

...for a healthy daily lifestyle

clothing

bedding

laundry detergents

For bleaching, add 1/4 to 1 full cup sodium hexamethaphosphate to 5 gallons water. In washing machine, fill with water, add 1/8 cup and continue adding until water gets a filmy feel. Then reduce usual soap to one half amount usually used. Odor laundering is done with 1 tablespoon TSP (trisodium phosphate...from hardware store) baking soda and vinegar. (2)

Spot removal is done immediately by rinsing with club soda (soda water). Boiling water poured through stain works for fruit juice and tea stains.. Glycerin will often soften spots from grassor or milk...rinse in warm water. Undiluted vinegar or lemon juice removes some spots. (2)

soaps

shampoos/contditioners

Dandruff shampoo is a handful of baking soda rubbed into scalp and thoroughly rinsed (2)

Allergies

Vitamin intake of 500 mg vitamin c three times daily, 50 mg pantothenic acid twice daily, and a teaspoon of grated orange or lemon rind (2)

Insect Repellent-

Dip cottonballs in vinegar and apply to the skin. The odor dissapates quickly. Oil of pennyroyal mint (natural food store) will work...dilute with vegetable oil to prevent rashes. Eat garlic or apply. Basil planted outside will repel them. Basil plants inside will work, but most ei's are mold sensitive to houseplant soil.(2)

The best moth ball substitute available is to gather and bag juniper berries in cheesecloth and add the packets to all clothes storage drawers, boxes, closets and compartments. Juniper is a cedar. Cedar is a repellant.

...For a healthy landscape

...for healthy spas, facilities, gyms, exercise areas

...for healthy businesses

...for a healthy neighborhood

...for a healthy community

...for a healthy region/ bioregion

...for healthy public lands and facilities

...for healthy transportation

...for a healthy county

...for a healthy state

...for a healthy nation

...for a healthy planet

...and, of course, planets we're about to invade

biographies/ stories of EIs-the regional community/contacts

trudy giels

gary duncan

lana hansen

 

The Regional Network...contacts and bios

(transfer listing from paper binder files)

diagnosis of chemical sensitivieties

HBistory of EI

the medical profession and EI

Alternative Healers and the Development of EI treatment and diagnosis

Other diseases and their environmental origins

A Canary is your cheapest, most readily available and accurate indicator of toxins in your environment...use them, believe them

What's good for an EI is good for us all

Children now born with E.I.

E.I.s as the hope for the future...a class of people for whom the only alternative they have is to create non-toxic environments

If it gets by an EI its the highest assurance of safety for us all there is

The common offenders

Viable substitutes for EI's and those in their lives

Psychosomatics and EI

Other sources of information

The regional network

Genetic/chromosomal nature of EI

Psychological affects

EMF

Retrofitting a home

Public spaces and businesses/ events

EI warning texts recommended

Methods of approach that work

Information and support for the professional community

Natural building and Native Lifeways for the EI

In depth aspects of EI...for those who have to live with it:

Spiritual nature of EI

Emotional Nature of EI- Susceptibility of the victim mentality

Mental Nature of EI

EI and intimate relationships

Social Nature of EI

The EI and Politics

The Evolutionary Nature of EI-It is not a far stretch, especially in the bouts with futility, despondency, monotony and victimhood in desperate attempt to make sense out of being saddled with this disease...to surmise that EI's may well be an entire class of people (albiet one that is growing now exponentially) who are forced (since reason has not accomplished the task) into finding places and spaces in which chemical free living is a standard instead of a theory.

Doubtless, none of the other adaptations which have built the entirity of life in its unbelievable diversity and astounding integration with the rest of the environment came casually out of forethought and prudence. The tentacles of an octapus and the attraction of hummingbirds to red are hardly believable as the manifestations of prudence.

Species history composes itself mainly as a litany of failures...the ones that wouldn't listen or couldn't change. That's why we don't rise in the morning to chirping teradactyles or go to sleep nights to the sounds of snoring wooley mamoths. They couldn't change...we can...we've even been well warned about the legacy dangers of our planetary "chemical soup". Now, we either change or croak...voila...an entire class of once-homo-sapiens...now genetically mutated into "Homo-EI's". (The base-line chemical mutation which produces this disease is in the DNA chain itself....none of us are anylonger synonymous with the genetic structure we used to call "human")

We are a class of people who do not any longer have the option of chemical overdose. We have immune-hysteric aversion to hair dyes, fragrances, molds, stick built homes and herbacides. We live without them...or we don't live at all...or in a state of agony that makes us wish we weren't (living at all).

Now that the first wave of us have survived to describe the malady with precision...we are also recipient to the solutions...chemical free lifestyles, homes and spaces. We're doing it. I'm doing it. Not by volition, but by necessity.

Like all our choices in life...the important ones...our only real choice is that of attitude as weapons against the unspeaking solidity of fact. We can moan for our malady, or we can pick up the orders for change and realize that we are the harbingers, the architects and the carpenters of the coming age when "better living through chemistry" is finally and ignobaly "dead".

I, for one, now firmly believe that my personal legacy of complete disability, complete career collapse, complete immersion in dispair and the maddeningly slow climb back out of it, accumulating all the while, a whole bag on new tricks and explanations for life as an EI is for a reason and is critical to the changes humanity and the rest of the world now must face in order to survive. The "Canaries" are Darwinian Hummingbirds...we fly with the future of humanity harbored in our wings...at least the part of it worth saving. (The ones with the back pack sprayers, hair dyes and synthetic petrochemical fragrance stench wafting around their palid, beligerant torsoes are probably better left composting with the teransaurus, the ground sloth and the CEO's of Monsanto and Dow Chemical).

The athiest believes in nothing driving the universe and humankind...and they live, consequentially in cynicism and doubt. The agnostic argues the existence and that's how they spend most of their time...seldom really getting anything meaningful done. I've been both an athiest and an agnostic. Now, as an EI (which is someone who's butt has been soundly kicked...apparently by that which either does not or may not actually exist)...I chose to believe that we are indeed headed somewhere...probably I'm not the engineer...but as an EI, I've bought myself a very expensive ticket right up near the front of the train.

I like that attitude much better. It makes sense...when little else concerning this disease does.

Physical Nature of Ei- There are two distinct stages of symptoms/reactions to chemical immune damages: The first is the trauma and aftermath of the damage itself...which is cellular, molecular and genetic in its effect. This systemic malfunction produces an allergic response system which innappropriately (perhaps), over-exhuberantly (definately) activates our defense mechanisms to react to a broad spectrum of toxins or aggressors...many of which would not ordinarily be considered of significant threat to our wellbeing.

The second set of reactions is a result of candidiasis...which results from a metabolic imbalance created by the first stage immune system reaction, which results in the dumping of large amounts of hydrochloric acid into our metabolism. This is the classic line of defense against bacteria and other aggressors. Hydrochloric acid is a very strong chemical and within a very short period of time kills the benificial bacteria in our bodies resulting in candidiasis...whose byproducts procede to ransack our systems and catapault them into bizaar and debilitating reactivity levels which are the trademarks of this already bizaar enough disease.

There is little or no cure, treatment or reversal of the original immune system damage...although there are many healing modalities which claim otherwise. We will leave that debate for another time and place.

There are plenty of things that can be done for the candidiasis and in the curtailment of that imbalance lies the best of what an EI can hope for...a relatively productive and enjoyable life...given diligent avoidance of the first level toxin/aggressors which will trigger the HCL dump, which will plummet us immediatly back into candida overload and its angry aftermath.

candidiasis(this research document is in preparation.

chronic fatigue

short term memory loss

paranoia

loss of stamina-low blood oxygen

menaris syndrome-balance problems

low blood sugar-dizziness, vertigo

despondency/ brain fog/ complacency

impotence/ sexual dysfunction/ contagion of candida

skin rashes-itching-welts

hypersensitivity to emf

defending the disease

intestinal/digestive disorders

chronic sinusitus

acid esophigeal drainage...the reflux misdiagnosis

Genetics and EI...our future in the chemical soup

EI and alcoholism/ drug addiction

Dangerous bandaids...the mindnumbers for sick bodies

Direct corporate marketing sabatoge of EI information and credibility

Direct Medical disempowerment of the E.I.

Disability for EIs and public access

Legal aspects of EI

Taking the Bull by the Horns...EI's in Action

The Shakanaw Project

The Smart Shelter E.I. Land Steward Program

NFRia Organic Standard Parkway Project

Placerville Schoolhouse Parkway System

Cortex Malathion Group

Alternatives to pesticides group-Paonia

Valley Organic Growers Association-North Fork

CATPAW- Ridgway town council ban on herbacides

The E.I. Bill of Rights

The E.I. Sensitivity Questionaire...a preliminary screening questionaire to determine whether or not your have E.I. and to what level.