As the number of us showing signs of chemical allergies..to pesticides, herbicides, fragrances....increases (now 15-27% of the population according to the EPA and World Health Organization)....the need for places to go that are safe for our children, pets and ourselves becomes critical. Many believe our forest or the desert lands are safe. If we are going to provide safe spaces, we think we might as well select for their locations, the best ...the most attractive ...the most pristine of what deserves preserving and protecting in our public lands legacy ...for ourselves and generations to come.

This year the Bureau of Land Management will spray one million acres with herbacide...with no warnings to the public. Campgrounds, roadways and parks are among the heaviest sprayed locations in our society. The lSmart Shelter E.I. Land Steward Program identifies key public lands areas and pilots nontoxic irradication of invasive species, eliminating the need for herbicides like Round-Up, which damage our immune systems (similar to the legendary Agent Orange...an herbicide used in Vietnam and responsible for the deaths of thousands of veterans). The pattern of creating Chemical-Free public lands areas gives us a choice in terms of our recreational safety.

Some of the most dangerous areas we are exposed to are our municipal public parks. Because they receive so much traffic and use, they are chief targets for the introduction of invasive species...which leads to a maintenance problem all too often treated with chemicals. Children crawling on the grass, pets playing and laying on contaminated soil, the trafficking of herbicides on your shoes into the carpet in your home as well as the toxic fumes breathed as children play in public parks are key contact points for the chemical toxins now documented to destroy immune systems and provide the compromises leading to chronic fatigue, attention deficit disorder, fibro-myalgia, epstein barr virus, multiple sclerosis, etc.

Similar problems are incurred in campgrounds on public lands....which are sprayed voraciously with pesticides and herbicides. In one instance a few years ago, one of our regional EI's with advanced chemical sensitivity (Alpha 3 level) had her camper drenched in mosquito spray during the night by a patrolling spray truck while she was in the vehicle. She spent the next 12 hours in the Moab hospital while the staff meticulously cleansed her entire body and administered drugs to keep her respiratory system active. (Note here that on notification of the extent of liability of the sprayer, the next day all records of her treatment were removed from the hospital records...).

It doesn't work, even if it were feasible, to simply ban the use of these chemicals...to which you are being exposed without your consent or notification....and let the problems with insects and invasive plants overrun our increasingly overused public parkways and lands.

On the other hand, many of us with EI and knowledgeable enough about the sources of toxins and our reactions to them, find ourselves financially strapped because we cannot work in conventional job-places without becoming ill. Many of us live in "Micros" or other cleansed and detoxified housing. The really smart ones make sure that if they go to the trouble and expense of developing safe housing that it is also portable...since a next door neighbor deciding to spray a ditch bank with 2-4 D can end up in our not being able to stay home no matter how clean the inside is. (this is a real story).

The problems public lands and facilities managers face is that the chemicals often become a financial necessity (or at least apparently so). Public facilities managers fall into three very distinct catergories...those who belligerently and ignorantly insist there is no risk with chemicals (or people who simply find their smell intolerable)...those who think or are sure there is, but feel their hands are tied...and those who insist on finding other ways to deal with the problems.

Managers in the last category are rare...but do exist...for instance the Supervisor for the Flaming Gorge Recreation area insists on using only hand irradication of Tamarisk (successfully) while Mallory Demmit of the San Miguel County Nature Conservancy has succumbed to the propaganda of Dow Chemical and is using Pioneer 4 (an extremely toxic herbicide) in the stump-cut irradication of the Tamarisk on the San Miguel River Corridor (all of it)...which is loading the root systems (which remain in the soil for decades) with heavy doses of what this writer considers...because of the extent of this practice in the soils of our riparian river corridors...to be the next Super Fund Clean Up Site...the most disastrous in American History given its potential to contaminate the entire drainage basin of the Colorado River (all of which is being treated with similar chemicals). Mallory remains open-minded to the concerns of the EI community, but is under pressure to get the Nature Conservancy program against the Tamarisk (which is a very real problem) underway. It's her job. It's her choice to use the most apparently expedient device available.

For the belligerent, we can only hope (and providence seems here to cooperate with amazing regularity) that they themselves will contract Multiple Chemical Sensitivity...which makes a believer quickly out of the arrogant and ignorant...unless they simply take on a Paxcil or Zanex band-aid prescriptions, mask the symptoms of EI and its concomitant warnings and go on to develop cancer or the other immune-deformation disorders...which certainly will take care of the problems with their administrative shortcomings. In the mean time, entities such as Smart Shelter do little or nothing with these people. Experience indicates it is a waste of energy and time and usually only infuriates the unteachable....whose dilemmas are self-correcting in the long run without prescription anyway.

For the managers insistent on non-chemical remediation...the objective of the Smart Shelter E.I. Land Steward Program is to lay down experientially verified policies and procedures as well as a labor base to assist in their already established programs....to provide the labor base and an affordable medium of exchange to make hand or nontoxic irradication, remediation and prevention easily feasible.

If, indeed, it turns out to be workable to take EI's in portable "Micro" housing, locate them on designated safe "Chemical Free" public lands sites and exchange residency for their efforts in hand-irradication and restoration of invasive species problems, then a workable solution exists for all...and an extremely cost-effective one...at little or no cost to the public.

For the managers concerned, but victimized by the chemical corporations propaganda and budget pressures, (as well as the chemical corporation lobby-induced policies and laws effectively mandating use of their toxins...via our coin-operated state legislature and governor's office) the program provides education, encouragement and hope through real demonstration projects, which are being documented and videoed for manager and public education.

Out of the Land Steward and over time, it is hoped that a map or listing of "Safe" "Chemical Free" parks, campgrounds and public lands corridors can be presented to the EI public so that they too can enjoy our jointly owned...and hopefully, intelligently administered...public asset...which is so gorgeous and prolific in Western Colorado. Perhaps here we are creating the pattern for a legacy of sanity to turn the tides of the glaringly demonic marketing tag...."Better Living through Chemistry". For many of us...through chemistry, our living got decidedly worse.

A side note here deals with the "victimization" paradyme so common among EI's....who literally are victimized by being force-fed chemicals that are no longer effectively regulated, for which they have no awareness or education and to which they are being exposed without their knowledge, posting or consent. It does no good for those of us with this malady developed to lay down and allow ourselves to be "victims". It is the hope of the Land Steward Program that real and effective alternatives to progress up and out of this debilitating disease (now defiantly documented to affect us at the DNA...and consequently reproductive ....levels). If today, you were diagnosed with Alpha 2 MCS and told that your life will only worsen unless you clean it up...what better avenue of hope could we provide than the assistance and prescident of creating your own "Micro" and then a list of supportive public lands and facilities managers needing onsite presence for hand irradication of invasives in designated and enforced "Chemical-Free" zones....clean houses to live in...clean places to put them.

There is little more effective remedy for immune dysfunction (once the toxin sources are removed) than good old aerobic exercise. Whacking tamarisk and Russian Olive, hand pulling thistle, bio-remediating the damaged soils with your own compost....these are productive, hope-instilling, aerobic, simple, effective and demonstrative actions that can make EI's a public asset rather than the irascible, irritating, problematical sources we have become. It makes us feel better, its demonstrably curative in its effect and its potential for contribution to our public lands and their effective administration is huge.

A National Map for EI Safe Camping and Hiking Locales....doesn't sound unfeasible to me. Roll up our sleeves and get with it....that's what we're doing.