I can sense danger in the air, because I have MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity).

Most people are unaware that they are being poisoned. By breathing. I know, because a long time ago I received the gift of canaries. And humbly I thank God for it, because it helps me enjoy a longer and healthier life.

If people will let me.

Even though I’ve often said, or screamed, “I need fresh air,” I was always kindly ignored at best, and reverse- complimented at worst: “Paranoid. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.“ Therefore I’ll try to explain my “canary syndrome” in writing, so that those responsible for the health of others may be able to understand the reasons for my silent screams. And that many people might be in danger.

Miners have kept canaries in coalmines, because these can sense noxious and/or explosive gas before they themselves could detect it. They, the miners, wanted warnings, to have time to escape before the big kaboom, or to have time to say their last prayers. Like the canaries.

Even though I might not necessarily have smelled anything unpleasant, I have often felt evermore uncomfortable, the longer I have remained in certain enclosed spaces. I think that I finally learned the biggest reason for my discomfort, which has often approached desperation and sometimes panic.

No, it’s not all in my head!

Throughout my life, my fellow man has exposed me to dozens and dozens of wonderful chemicals. These were mostly in the food I ate, the air I breathed and the things I touched.

A few examples:

To begin with, when I was a toddler, phosphorous firebombs were a nice beginning to my chemical treatments. Big fires, and I mean huge fires, converted useless artwork, carpets, beams, paint, fuel, and oxygen into friendly neighborhood carbon monoxide and hundreds of roaring, aerial chemical compounds. All of which have important sounding sesquipedalian names. Nonetheless, I am not complaining about this, because I’m very thankful that heroes liberated me from the Nazi regime.

Once I drank a can of world-famous, as-not-advertised lean poop. Instead of drifting through warm, out-of-focus summer meadows, with colorful butterflies, I bounced off walls for about two hours. And I didn’t ask for my money back.

During my early twenties, when I should have been bar-hopping to enhance my exuberant lifestyle, I, instead, had to claw myself out of my family-created hell, by, at times, having to wrestle dripping-wet insecticide/fungicide-treated three by six timbers during nightshifts.

Oddly, my corporate sponsor did not advertise that these ‘cides would enable us human robots to flutter with butterflies in the soft summer evening light. Sponsor also gave no safety instructions and OSHA hadn’t been invented yet.

For twelve years, my last employment entity provided me with similar long-term mental and physical health benefits. It, this entity, held me, and others, captive in a literal anaerobically-sealed office building. Among other interesting chemical compounds, we Dilbert cartoon figures were forced to recycle, through our lungs, were mixtures of formaldehyde, paint, digestive gases and few moribund oxygen molecules. This potpourri was liberally enhanced with so much fiberglass from the air-duct lining, that one often could, with a debonair-like-flair swipe, gather mouse-sized wads from desktops. Once, suddenly, such dark dust/fiberglass clouds belched simultaneously out of the ceiling air registers in our part of the building, that everyone had to evacuate. The building.

After the Great Intra-Office Operation Dust Storm, we evacuees returned to our respective cubicles. And, ingeniously, no one even investigated the source or its cause of this aerial attack. Could it have been a terrorist, somebody’s bored teenager, or simply evermore-common, self-induced stupidity by the personnel responsible in constructing or maintaining this system?
.
In desperation, I, who during his youth had jumped off a manure spreader to liberate himself from literal slavery, suspiciously and filled with paranoia, climbed onto the office roof to investigate, and found that the air filters had been so clogged that they had blown out. Without an explosive charge

Furthermore, I found all of their motorized, automated five to six square-foot-sized fresh air intake louvers frozen in the closed position. Motors burned out. Except for the carbon monoxide sucking one. It was cleverly located on the ground, next to the parking lot, so that we all could benefit from the fresh exhaust of vehicles backed up to it.

I informed my employer, who with the lightening speed of several eon-years finally replaced all of the air-handling units. For which I will forever be grateful.

Have you heard about Weapons of Mass Destruction?

From then one, I personally kept replacing these filters, as a humanitarian gesture towards Dopey, so he would not suffer further brain damage, lest he fell off the ladder up to the roof, even though I was not trained in complex filter replacement technology: Take dirty filters out, put new ones in, according to highly scientific instructions: airflow direction arrows on the side of the filters.

And to further suppress our brain capacity in designing multi-million dollar projects, the huge emergency diesel-powered generator located in the basement, with its big exhaust pipe outlet cleverly located near the fresh air intake of one of the air-handling units on the roof, was started up monthly.

Three times during each working day, my polluted-air-panic-response drove me out of my gloomy shaft, to go for walks in the great outdoors, during coffee breaks and lunch hours, to find relief in 100 plus degree or thirty-below degree blizzards. That’s when I felt alive and my spirit soared like eagles,

So far, God has protected me from the beneficial long-term after-effects of my life-long treatments. And has given me a wonderful warning system, one much like those of canaries. That’s why I have been the only one to frequently chirp the alarm. Needless to say, my alarming chirps are almost always ignored, because stunted imagination cannot visualize invisible seeds of cancer, emphysema, etc. being planted in lungs and in every cell of withering bodies.

A couple of days ago, I received the fall 2004 issue of my Washington State Magazine subscription. Below are excerpts from its article titled Tracing The Elusive Cause of Panic:

“(Researcher) Barbara Sorg’s formaldehyde animal model has shown that exposure to the chemical increases levels of stress-hormone production…

“For those who suffer from multiple chemical sensitivity, or MCS, a trip to the grocery store may be all it takes to bring on severe headaches,… dizziness, or difficulty in thinking…

“MCS, along with panic disorder, post-traumatic stress syndrome, … is little understood. All appear to be initiated by an event such as chemical exposure, trauma, or illness. With MCS, it may be one large exposure, or repeated low-level exposures, such as home pesticide spraying…

“Once created, the memory trace can be activated not just by the original chemical, but also by other chemicals …”

… repeated low-level exposures…. repeated low-level exposures… repeated low-level exposures…
…also by other chemicals… also by other chemicals… also by other chemicals…

I searched the Net for “multiple chemical sensitivity.” The results made my eyes bug out. This confirmed that your wonderful body, well, at least my wonderful body, is telling me, “If you keep killing me with poisons, I may die a miserable death. And it will be your fault.“

So don’t expect me to hang around anymore, whenever and wherever, my canary instict chirps, “Evacuate!”

The building!

“Thou shalt not kill.” Not with guns, clubs or knives. Not even very, very slowly, very, very miserably through ignorance and denial. Like I have predicted in the past that a few people would. And sadly they did.

Chirp!