DweezelJazz Art Blog » Allergies and Asthma

TMD, A Short Upper Lip, And How I’ve Dealt With Them

DweezelJazz — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 14:23:39 +0000

Productivity is something we’re all interested in. How can we optimise our time so that we can do more, achieve more and have fun while we’re doing it? There are all sorts of ways to become more efficient, and they work well, but sometimes we have a health issue that holds us down. Most everyone has something of this nature at some point in their lives.

This post is about Temporomandibular Joint Disorder and having a short upper lip. Jaw joint problems seem to be fairly common and the symptoms that can arise from jaw misalignment are many. Yet it’s rarely considered by doctors or dentists as being a possible cause for a disconcertingly large array of otherwise unexplained symptoms.

Last February during a routine dental checkup a dentist alerted me to the fact that I had jaw problems. Consequently during this last year I’ve had to learn about it and how to deal with it. I’m hoping that this post might be helpful to others in raising awareness of this condition. I’m not a medical doctor so I can’t advise in a medical capacity.

It turns out that I’ve had jaw problems all my life, with severe symptoms to go along with it. I had braces from the age of 7 until I was 16 or 17 years old. I’ve had regular dental checkups throughout my life and then I had braces reapplied seven years ago for a couple of years to attempt to stop my teeth moving around so much and having teeth pain.

No one ever mentioned the possibility that the jaw could be out of alignment, nor did they ever mention that having a short upper lip could cause problems. I’ve had to live with intense pain and many other side-effects from this most of my life. With each passing year, it was getting harder to keep going and I was beginning to lose hope of ever accomplishing my goals, so I’m very grateful for the timing of the dentist I went to see earlier this year.

I’m sharing here what I’ve learned in the hope that by raising awareness of the difficulties that can arise through simple jaw misalignment, perhaps it can save others from going through years of misery. Below, I briefly describe the effects of TMD, having a short upper lip and how I’ve managed to fix these problems for myself. If you have no interest in this topic, you could stop reading at this point.

Temporomandibular joint disorder – that’s a real mouthful. It’s often abreviated to TMD or TMJ disorder. Whatever you call it, it can be a huge problem. What it boils down to is that for some reason the jaw joint is not working the way it should.

There are many things that can cause the joint to become misaligned: an injury to the joint itself, poor posture, an accident, injury to the spine, the need for orthotics, orthodentistry performed without consideration of jaw alignment with respect to the teeth,…and perhaps some combination of these things. This means that it can be tricky to find out what’s causing the problem.

Symptoms resulting from jaw misalignment can also vary from person to person, both in severity and in the number of symptoms. It can cause havoc with a person’s ability to function, and when the symptoms are significant, it can even result in a person being essentially disabled. If the source of the problem is identified, that person can recover and the symptoms can be eliminated.

A brief description of some of the symptoms that can occur: severe migraine-type headache pretty much most of the time, eye pain and blurred vision, light sensitivity, jaw pain, tooth pain, inability to swallow properly, ear pain without infection, severe constant dizziness, nausea, neck and shoulder muscle strain resulting in inability to move neck, sore throat, difficulty breathing with asthma-like symptoms, inability to sleep for more than a few hours at a time, teeth clenching, teeth grinding,…the list goes on.

It’s much more complicated than this, and this isn’t a technical medical explanation, but if the symptoms are bad enough the scenario can go something like this: to cope with the pain and these symptoms, the body pumps high levels of adrenaline; in the long-term the adrenal glands eventually become fatigued; this affects the production of other hormones in the body and before you know it, you’ve got allergies, digestion problems, the body can’t clear toxins effectively, chemical sensitivity can develop, energy levels hit rock bottom and it’s virtually impossible to exercise.

Then if you go to a doctor, they typically can’t figure out what’s causing the problem because the body is actually healthy, so no test will uncover anything inherently wrong. And there you are at a dead end, always in pain, unable to sleep, not knowing why, but unable to live. Well, that might sound rather grim, but it really is. What does a person do then?

I was super lucky. Last February I went to the dentist for a routine checkup. He took an interest in me because he specialises in TMD and recognised just by looking at me that I could have a jaw problem.

It has been a hard path trying to understand the problem and figure out what to do about it. There were many days when it seemed nothing could successfully be done about it.

I learned where my lower jaw needs to be positioned relative to the upper jaw, in order for me to not experience the TMD symptoms. In my case the upper front teeth and lower front teeth coincide in position. If I bring my teeth together in a normal bite, then the lower jaw is too far back.

Each person has a different jaw alignment position. Usually it coincides with the bite placement of the teeth, which makes things easy. If it doesn’t, then it’s important to find the correct alignment. Of course, it’s possible to have injury inside the jaw joint and then this would need to have proper attention.

The goal is to align the jaw correctly and relax the facial muscles. In my case, I have a further complication in that I have a very short upper lip. There’s an 8 mm gap between my upper and lower lips when they’re at rest. This is a real problem. It means that the facial muscles can never be properly relaxed. Closing the mouth under these circumstances requires constant muscle work, pushing the lower lip up to meet the upper lip. This is like constantly holding your arm out horizontally. Eventually you’d experience difficulties trying to hold that arm out all the time; it could cause cramps in the arm and back muscles and who knows where else. The jaw joint and all of its attendant ligaments and muscles is the most complicated in the body.

This year I have learned not to attempt to close my mouth. But this still isn’t enough in itself. The muscles can’t relax because they have nothing to rest on. This means that the face muscles still contract and tense all the time. In my case, this tensing of the muscles in the face is enough to pull my lower jaw backwards relative to the upper jaw, the face muscles constrict and tighten, resulting in TMD and all its symptoms.

Another complication that can occur is that if the muscle contraction is sufficient to cause nasal constriction then it can become difficult to breathe freely through the nose, especially if the mouth is open. This encourages mouth breathing, which causes the tongue to assume a tensed position, which in turn can cause further tensing of the facial muscles. All of this serves as a feedback loop, one effect aggravating another. If the nose has been broken through injury in the past it’s well worth getting it checked to see if there is a deviated septum or some obstruction that needs correcting.

In my situation, the problem that needed solving was: what to do about having a short upper lip. If orthodentist treatment is started at an early enough age, then the growth of the bone above the front teeth and below the nose can be halted. I believe this is why I was given orthodental treatment at such an early age, but we moved country every couple of years and maybe something got lost in the treatment along the way.

As an adult, it’s possible to operate to shorten that bone, but there’s controversy as to how well this works. I’ve chosen not to take that route.

I found something else that works. I had taken up playing the trumpet a few years ago, and when I asked my dentist if it was ok for me to play it, he encouraged me to do so, saying it might help to strengthen the facial muscles. Playing the trumpet regularly through the day really helped remove many of the symptoms to a workable level.

Pulling the upper lip low to play the trumpet caused it to press against the upper gums, even though the trumpet mouthpiece was placed very lightly on my face. The shortness of the lip requires that I really need to pull it down much more than would be necessary with a more normal length upper lip. Eventually this caused discomfort to the gums. I decided to take a break from playing the trumpet to rest them.

Within a week of not playing the trumpet I sank deeply back into the TMD symptoms and had lost the improved productivity that I had maintained for much of this last year. It was a devastating loss.

Soprano Saxophone

Desperate to find another solution so that I could at least function and have a life, I looked at all the other wind instruments I might be able to play, with less need to pull the lower lip down so far. I decided to try the saxophone. It works to control some of the muscle and TMD problems even better than the trumpet did.

In time though, as I lost the strength of the trumpet muscles through not playing the trumpet at all, I discovered that it’s also necessary for me to continue playing the trumpet regularly to maintain what it does for the facial muscles. So now I play both instruments and the result allows me to function well and live an active, normal productive life. I sleep well and have loads of energy. The balance of how much time playing, how often, and which instrument, is something I work out by trial and error for the most beneficial results.

I’ve tried to think of some way to invent something that could be put between my lips to prop them in a similar manner to having the lips contact with one another like they would in a normal mouth. The complications of how to shape such an object and how to keep it in position have thwarted me in pursuing it. It would be costly and I don’t have access to a workshop to create such a device. But I think it could solve the problem without the need to play an instrument to help the muscles.

Tenor Saxophone

It’s hard to believe that playing the trumpet and saxophone regularly through the day could reduce the symptoms to nearly nothing, but it does. If I go beyond much more than a couple of hours without playing, I’m soon reminded by the tightening of the facial muscles, jaw pain, a blocked nose and a deep headache for starters. Playing the trumpet and saxophone is an odd solution, and certainly not a perfect solution, but it’s enabling me to live life fully and with energy.

I’ve experienced TMD difficulties all of my life without knowing the cause. Each person will likely have a different set of methods to solve their problem, but if relating my experience here can be of help in some way to you or someone you know, that would be great.

Summertime Activities

DweezelJazz — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:43:20 +0000

Wheat almost ready to harvest

It has been a long time since the last post here on DweezelJazz Art blog. There have been a combination of things that made this so. What started it was that we lost our Internet connection for six weeks. Our Internet Service Provider, who will remain nameless here, upgraded their service, but unfortunately they lost our connection altogether and never found it again! So we switched providers. In France it takes a long time for a new provider to set up the line. But we’ve been back online for a few weeks now and everything is working very nicely.

Green Summer Countryside

We’ve had a very unusual summer here – it has rained so much that everything has stayed green and it looks like the high Alps in summertime. It’s absolutely beautiful. The air has been cleaned every few days by another downpour and lots of wind, but we’ve also had a lot of bright, shiny sunshine. It has been idyllic.

Corn Field

We’ve watched and heard the sparrows nesting in the eaves of our house. The swallows and house martins, also living around here, are cleaning up all of the mosquitoes in the area – we haven’t been bitten once at home! The swallows are fantastic to watch as they swoop gracefully back and forth, nearly colliding with the walls when they get close to the house. The roosters and chickens in the large open field next to us have been announcing themselves loudly and are a real joy to watch as they bound and run across the tall grass, always busy.

Jet D'Eau Geneva Switzerland

It has also been an eventful summer, as a result of something that happened way back in February. I went to the dentist to have a fixed orthodontic retainer glued back on. (Visits to the dentist have taken me frequently into Geneva and so I’ve witnessed summer in town too, as you can see in the photos.) This simple goal turned out to be far more involved than I at first thought. The dentist took one look at me, asked me all about any symptoms I experienced and then he announced that he thought he might be able to largely remove those symptoms: migraines, nausea, dizziness, blurred vision, extreme fatigue, difficulty breathing, lung discomfort, neck and back muscle cramps, lack of sleep, and so on.

And, to my utmost amazement, in addition to the removal of these symptoms, I found that I no longer had reactions to being around perfumes, cleaning products and other toxic chemicals I have hitherto found increasingly difficult to endure. I didn’t rush out to put these things in my environment, but it was fabulous not to feel like someone had laid out kryptonite around me every time I went out somewhere.

Place du Bourg de Four, Old Town Geneva, Switzerland

I’ve lived with these difficulties all my life and had come to accept them as part of life, at least my life. So it has been with amazement that I’ve discovered that these myriad symptoms are indeed entirely due to jaw misalignment. I’ve learned a tremendous amount about this in the last months; it hasn’t been easy and has taken a huge amount of thinking and observing on my part, all the while trying to learn fast enough so as not to fall back into the abyss of pain-ridden exhaustion. Life rarely offers a magic bullet. My situation isn’t totally resolved and I’m still trying to find out if there’s a long-term solution to correct the jaw alignment.

Parc des Bastions, Geneva, Switzerland

The great thing is that along the way, there have been times during the last months that I’ve been the most pain-free I’ve ever been – in fact, I didn’t know what it was like to be that pain-free – didn’t know what it was like to have energy, and long, deep nights of sleep. Fantastic! So I took advantage of it!

Looking up at back of Old Town Geneva from opposite the Parc des Bastions

In June I finished the Total Training Online Course on Adobe Dreamweaver, and within a couple of weeks I designed a completely new look for DweezelJazz Art site, with new galleries and descriptive content for the paintings.

Then I worked on a number of drawings for paintings in egg tempera, inked them…

Inked drawings ready to glue onto the tempered glass.

and then glued them onto tempered glass.

Drawings ready to be underpainted, and then prepped for painting with egg tempera.

As I was doing this, and also preparing some drawings for painting in watercolor, Tony came up with a brilliant idea: what about creating a book of paintings? Well, I have wanted to do something of that kind for a long time, dreaming about it. I decided to bite the bullet. I chose the subject, in fact, if I survive the first book, I plan to do a series of them: each book dedicated to a town and area in the Pays de Gex, France / Geneva, Switzerland area.

I started with a plan to fill a 60-page book, large format. So I created a storyboard for the entire book, including image sizes and placement.

Storyboard for the first book.

Then I started drawing and drawing and drawing.

A drawing for the book.

I’m including scenes in towns and in the countryside around them, so that the book will give the feel of the place as a whole.

This is what I call a "cow bus".

Quite often at the beginning of summer, you can see tractors hauling a trailer full of cows out to the fields, and again in fall taking them back to the warmth of the barns. It almost seems like the cows are being transported to school or something, so I call it a ‘cow bus’.

I’ve completed 64 drawings and have 18 left to do. Then, all I have to do is paint them! I’ll paint them probably using a combination of ink and watercolor. And of course add text to accompany the paintings.

Sunflower

So, if you’ve managed to read this entire post and have reached this far: thank you! Thank you for reading this blog, and if you’ve been a reader for some time, thank you for continuing to read DweezelJazz Art blog. I don’t post as often as I used to because I’ve had to prioritize the precious commodity of time, but I do plan to continue posting and have some photos of pretty places and countryside ready for future posts. I’m very happy if you find it interesting and fun. Life is full of beautiful things, to cherish and enjoy, and I try to share a little of that here.

This sunflower, for example, just wouldn’t pose correctly for the photo – I reckon it was a bit drunk out there in the fresh air – couldn’t focus on having it’s photo taken! But it is beautiful, nonetheless.

Breathing One Breath At A Time

DweezelJazz — Wed, 21 May 2008 07:00:00 +0000

I’m aware of almost every breath I take – and that’s because most of the time it hurts to breathe. This discomfort increases or lessens with variations in the air quality in my environment. There are some positive aspects to this: I’m great to have around as an air quality monitor. Unfortunately there are rather too many inconveniences that arise from this situation to balance out the positive, and no one has yet offered me a job as an air quality meter!Our town is expanding in size at a phenomenal rate, perhaps doubling or tripling in the number of apartment buildings in just the last year alone. In a two-block radius from where we live the number of cranes that can be seen actively involved in constructing new apartments is astonishing. Rapid expansion is the norm almost everywhere today, bringing with it increased activity of all types.Traffic locally has increased dramatically as the number of households increases. And there are more cars per household because more people need to go to work to sustain the family unit in the face of increased cost of living. Our apartment block car-park is now filled to overflowing, whereas a year ago spaces were easily found at all times.We live a block away from a large school which is at the end of a dead end road. Four times a day school buses and long lines of cars wait in line to drop children off at the school and then turn around and wait in line to exit the cul-de-sac. Diesel fumes in our neighborhood continue to rise.Many people still choose to burn their garden refuse outside in small or large bonfires, rather than take it to the dump where it can often be disposed of in a more environmentally friendly manner. The result is that most days, usually for an hour or so, the strong acrid smell of smoke and particles of ash drifts by our apartment building.The sky blue becomes remote and is filled instead with a brown-orange haze. Trees become less distinct, blurred by haze of pollution. Reflections no longer show bright and dazzling, instead they glow dull yellow.When the rain and wind comes it clears the air and the sparkling brilliance and wonder of our earth is clear to see again. But with each passing year, the length of time this lasts after a rainfall is becoming less before it builds up and becomes murky from our activities again.With every breath I take I’m aware of this progression, acutely aware because I’m forced to notice it. As a kid I traveled with my family to many places, experienced many different environmental conditions and inadvertently was exposed to a good number of toxic substances – things that are now coming to be recognized as problematic to the health.The prolific number of articles being published these days about all kinds of substances used in products that are now being discovered to be harmful to our health is hard to miss. Here’s a few about pollution:1. “Pneumonia ‘linked’ to Pollution” BBC News, April 14, 2008. Professor George Knox, of the University of Birmingham, wrote in a research report that there were high mortality rates observed in areas with elevated ambient pollution levels. The strongest single effect was an increase in pneumonia deaths, but there were also higher rates of some cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and rheumatic heart disease. Richard Hubbard of the British Lung Foundation said: “What this paper does show, is that there is clear geographical variation in deaths from pneumonia, lung cancer and COPD.”2. “Pollution ‘alters brain function’” BBC News, March 11, 2008. A team at Zuyd University in the Netherlands studied the effects of diesel exhaust on humans. They found that after about 30 minutes exposure to diesel fumes the brain displayed (via EEG readings, electrical signals of the brain) a stress response that indicates a change in the way information is being processed in the brain cortex. This effect continued after the people were removed from exposure to the diesel fumes.The lead researcher, Paul Borm, said “We can only speculate what these effects may mean for the chronic exposure to air pollution encountered in busy cities where the levels of such soot particles can be very high.”The article ends with this startling statement: “But a study of dogs in Mexico found those who lived in highly-polluted Mexico City had brain lesions similar to those seen in Alzheimer’s patients, while those who lived in much less-polluted rural areas showed a much lower rate of damage to the brain.”3. “Smog Can Make People Sick, Even Indoors” Scientific American, January 29, 2008. Environmental health scientist Michael Apte of Lawrance Berkeley National Laboratory in California said: “We found that outdoor air pollution, ozone, is associated with symptoms of lower-respiratory and upper-respiratory stress that occur in buildings to workers.” Ozone is an air-polluting oxygen molecule O3 which is formed when sunlight interacts with car exhaust.The article explains: “Sick building syndrome is a term used to describe a broad range of ailments, including dry eye, congestion, difficulty breathing, fatigue and headaches that strike workers inside office buildings but disappear when they leave the premises.”The results from a study of indoor air quality data from 1994-1998 and a survey of office workers in 100 buildings in 37 cities (ranging from the most smog to the cleanest) showed that of the workers surveyed on average, even in buildings with no special history of sickness:nearly 19% complained of dry eye21% felt congested on the job4% complained of difficulty breathingmore than 19% felt fatiguedmore than 15% reported having headaches while at work.These figures are astounding and illustrate the damage occurring to many people in our society. In this article Michael Apte speculates that the symptoms experienced by people are due to unstable ozone molecules chemically interacting with the wide range of materials found in buildings. Ozone reacts with all types of materials from polyester, plastics, carpet fibres, the skin’s natural oil, and many more, to produce toxic chemicals like formaldehyde and other irritants that are far worse than the ozone itself.The article continues: “In other words, ozone seeping into buildings combines with other chemicals to produce more noxious air.”In addition to the outside air becoming more polluted with traffic, smoke, pesticides and many other substances, the general population is using more and more household chemicals in increasingly higher concentrations.As it’s getting warmer with summer approaching it’s becoming tremendously difficult to effectively keep higher concentrations of household chemicals out of our apartment. If our neighbors have their laundry drying on their balconies (and this is a daily common occurrence) then I cannot open our balcony windows without experiencing great difficulty and discomfort breathing due to the laundry detergent and fabric softener chemicals exuding from the clothes.If our neighbors have their windows open, the strong chemical fumes of laundry detergent with fabric softeners, household cleaning agents and personal grooming products such as perfume are so strong that it’s necessary to close the windows to prevent the strong mixture from swamping our apartment.The following article about the “Health Risks of Fabric Softeners” on the Allergy and Environmental Health Association web site has some disturbing information. They state that fabric softener is the most toxic product sold for daily household use and give the following information about it:”…a user becomes ‘chronically maladapted’ to it. The exposure is so constant that it can be difficult to connect the product with the signs of reactivity it causes. Neurostimulant / irritants and central nervous system toxins used in these products are known to produce an addictive-type response that may cause the user to experience a feeling of pleasure when the product is directly inhaled. Regular users of fabric softeners (and perfumes) also often claim they ‘can hardly smell it’. This too is an effect of chemical ingredients on neural receptors.”"The product is designed to impregnate fibers and slowly re-release for an extended period of time. That re-releasing affects the health not only of users, but those around them.”On the subject of “Risks of Perfumes and Scented Products” it continues: “The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) collected samples of every perfume sold in North America in 1993. Every sample contained toluene…”. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health lists toluene in their Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards, and the link can be followed to see this in more detail.There is a list of some of the chemical ingredients found in fabric softeners and of the disorders each of these substances is known to cause. The list is worth reading.When we first moved into this apartment building just over a year ago the stairwell was cleaned once a week with a relatively mild-scented cleaning detergent. The cleaning detergent has been changed to a more highly scented product which smells very much like the antibacterial strongly scented products that are routinely used in toilets. The stairwell is now cleaned 3 or 4 times a week with an increasingly more concentrated solution of this product.It’s becoming impossible to prevent large amounts of household cleaning chemicals from entering our apartment airflow. Even with large air filters working 24 hours a day the adverse effects are becoming worse and I’m becoming increasingly unable to function in this environment. When driving or walking in the vicinity of our apartments it’s possible to smell that the area is encompassed by a cloud of chemicals.As soon as I leave the area and enter the clean air of the foothills 20 minutes’ walk behind where we live my breathing returns to normal and after a while I no longer feel lung pain. When I return to places where there are houses or apartment buildings, the fumes emanating from them cause a return of the burning pain in the lungs. Our apartment building is no exception to the norm, even passing cars leave a trail of scent from perfumes and scented products of their owners behind them.As the intensity of the chemicals increases with the oncoming summer heat, I’m becoming more and more unwell at home. I’ll have to spend much of my day outside in the cleaner air in the hills away from my home in order to reduce my exposures to these chemicals, to avoid becoming ill all the time and to try to prevent becoming even more sensitive to them.If I’m not at home I can’t paint egg tempera paintings as a full-time occupation. I had been hoping to create enough paintings to set up for an exhibition, and in time, earn enough money to be able to afford to live in a small house where I wouldn’t be at the mercy of others’ choices in cleaning habits.It’s frustrating beyond expression to be perfectly well in clean fresh air, but to essentially find myself poisoned in my home environment. I was hoping to get ahead with the artwork before our environment became prohibitive to my ability to function. I haven’t given up, but it’s becoming more and more difficult.I wish, by sharing this information, that maybe more people can perhaps benefit from my experience and avoid having to reach this point. Even eliminating a few of these products from our daily lives can make a huge difference in how energetic and good we feel.The cumulative impact of our choices can have a very high price in the future quality of our lives and those of our children. I wonder what it will take for us as a society to really understand the extent of the damage we’re inflicting on ourselves and the wildlife around us. If you’d like to see more on chemical sensitivity, pollution, cleaning agents and the effects they’re having, click here to see previous DweezelJazz posts on these topics.

How To Reduce Our Pollution Intake On Car Journeys

DweezelJazz — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 07:00:00 +0000

Ozone is a major component of urban air pollution and is associated with increased cardiovascular and pulmonary hospitalizations and deaths. An article published in the October Journal of Immunology and described by EurekAlert! says: “Ozone shuts down early immune response in lungs and body”. The mechanisms for this remain unclear, and pulmonary researchers at Duke University Medical Center have been performing studies to find out more.John Hollingsworth, M.D., and lead author of this study, said: “…it appears that ozone causes the innate immune system to overreact, killing key immune system cells, and possibly making the lung more susceptible to subsequent invaders, such as bacteria.”The article concludes: “The Environmental Protection Agency is in the final phases of reviewing and possibly updating the standards for allowable levels of ozone in the air. The current standard says that any amount greater than 85 parts per billion can be unhealthy for those at risk. Many medical groups, including the American Thoracic Society, recommend setting a stricter standard of 60 parts per billion, citing studies showing ozone’s adverse effects on health, especially in children and those with compromised health.”One way we can take some control of the amount of exposure we undergo is to minimize it by using an air filter in our car. When we’re out driving we can be exposed to a vast amount of pollution. Exhaust from cars and trucks, heavy duty vehicles on construction sites, … the list is varied and long. One very effective and easy-to-install filter is the XR-100 Car air purifier. This air filter removes particles, odors, particulates and volatile organic compounds, and it cleans the air within the car 10 times per hour. This costs approximately 150 pounds UK Sterling.It has straps to hang it from the back of a front seat and it plugs into the cigarette lighter outlet.My experience is that it makes a tremendous difference and it’s a simple and effective way to significantly reduce exposure to pollution on car journeys..

The Importance of Knowing About Our Chemical Environment, Part II

DweezelJazz — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 07:00:00 +0000

Being well-informed is all well and good, but situations also occur that as individuals we may not, in the short-term, necessarily be able to do anything about. We’re surrounded by materials that are proving on a larger scale and varying conditions to be more problematic to the health than previously understood.These two articles provide a good introduction into problems that can arise:1. Prolonged respiratory problems for oil spill clean-up volunteers2. The 9/11 Cover-UpThe first article was published in September in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, by the American Thoracic Society and is described at EurekAlert!. The article says that researchers from Spain say that workers and volunteers who helped in the clean-up effort after the 2002 Prestige Oil spill off the coast of Galicia, Spain, exhibit prolonged respiratory symptoms resulting from their exposure. More than 100,000 people participated in the clean-up effort.Dr. Francisco Pozo-Rodriguez, M.D., lead investigator of the study, wrote: “To our knowledge, no previous study has explored long-term respiratory effects in clean-up workers of other oil spills. Our findings suggest that participation in clean-up work of oil spills may result in prolonged adverse respiratory health effects 1-2 years after exposure. Increasing awareness of the potential chronic respiratory effects among clean up workers of future oil spills, in combination with appropriate hygiene regulations, is strongly recommended.”The second article, cited above, was published in the Special Anniversary Issue of Discover magazine in October. The online version of this article can be seen here.This article reports that up to 70% of first responders are ill as a result of 9/11 contamination. “About 70,000 New Yorkers so far have listed themselves with the World Trade Center Health Registry, a database that tracks the health impact of the 9/11 attacks. The registry has been criticized for excluding large numbers of those potentially sickened outside a designated one-square mile area. Despite the insistent denials of city and federal officials, tens of thousands of New Yorkers were unnecessarily exposed to a chemical brew without even the most rudimentary precautions.”The article continues: “Since the attacks, various scientific studies have demonstrated that New Yorkers are engulfed in billows of illness and disease related to 9/11. First the cough and mental health problems caught the attention of local doctors. Then chronic respiratory and gastrointestinal conditions began to surface. Recently a program at Mount Sinai noted the emergence of rare blood cancers among 9/11 first responders. Experts predict that more problems will surface in the next few decades.”Later it describes: “Heat up a ballpoint pen, a computer, an office sofa, electric wire, or any other object you might find in a high-rise and there comes a point when you can inhale it. The Twin Towers contained tens of thousands of computer terminals, each housing about four pounds of lead, and an untold number of fluorescent bulbs that contained mercury. Released metal particles from the smoldering pit of the World Trade Center were so fine that they could easily slip past a paper face mask and reach deep into lung tissue, where they are poorly soluble in lung fluid. Metals and glass can remain trapped there for long periods of time and make their way into the heart.”Thomas Cahill, a professor of physics and atmospheric sciences at the University of California at Davis has led some of the most exhaustive scientific studies of 9/11-related toxins. From his studies he concluded: “The fuming World Trade Center debris pile was a chemical factory that exhaled toxins in a particularly dangerous form that could penetrate deep into the lungs of rescue workers and local residents”.The Discover 9/11 article is long and sobering, but it’s well worth the time it takes to read it in full. I became aware of this article by reading a post in a really great blog called BLDG BLOG by Geoff Manaugh. His post, “Inhaling 9/11″, is thought-provoking with its presentation of a new viewpoint, along with a few incredible photographs. This too is very well worth reading.Large scale disasters present us with difficulties that sometimes are not completely surmountable without injury. But foreknowledge can empower us to make better decisions. And if, on a smaller scale, we are confronted with a home or office fire, or some other incident, we may be able to avoid exposure through making choices we might not otherwise make. Knowledge provides us with a fighting chance: the power of choice.

The Importance Of Knowing About Our Chemical Environment, Part I

DweezelJazz — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 07:00:00 +0000

These days it pays more than ever to be well-informed. Becoming well-informed is not always easy. It requires that we glean information from reliable sources and that the currently accepted facts are indeed correct.Modern society relies so heavily on new technology, which is wonderful in itself, but is not always fully tested in its possible short-term and long-term ramifications for human health. There have been an increasing number of articles recently that illustrate this lack of knowledge in our use of different substances. It also demonstrates that we can’t simply rely on retail and manufacture to ensure that what is sold to consumers is safe in terms of our health.On October 12th, BBC News published an article: “Housework ‘can cause asthma’”. The first paragraph reads: “A study found using household cleaning sprays and air fresheners as little as once a week raised the risk of asthma.” It continues: “Spray air fresheners, furniture cleaners and glass cleaners carried the highest risk.”The article points out that heavy use of such products has already been linked with occupational asthma, but studies now also show that even little home use increases the risk by 15% or causes asthma in one out of seven adults. If the sprays and cleaning agents were used more often than once a week, then the risk could be higher by 30-50%.The statistics given in this article are enough to suggest that if we limit our use, or even better, if we eliminate them altogether, and pursue other ways which are non-toxic to clean our homes, we’ll reduce the risk of respiratory health problems for ourselves and our families. For more about non-toxic cleaners see previous post: Cleaning With Non-Toxic Substances.An article published by The Independent on October 21st is entitled: “Legal threat to Apple after toxic chemicals discovered in iPhone”. The article states that “Greenpeace bought an iPhone in the United States in June and had 18 of its materials and components independently tested for toxic substances. Half of them tested positive for bromine, ’suggesting widespread use’ of brominated flame retardants; these are suspected of a range of threats to health, and the bromine itself can cause pollution when disposed of as waste.”The article continues: “Four items also tested positive for antimony, a toxic mineral often used with flame retardants, and others contained very small amounts of chromium and lead. … But the greatest headache for Apple is the discovery of phthalates, used to make plastic more flexible, in the cable coating. The chemicals are suspected of causing birth defects and gender-bending effects. The Center for Environmental Health (CEH) says that under Californian law, products containing them must carry a warning label.”This following statement is the one I find most interesting: “Greenpeace says that all the chemicals found would be allowed under European law…” It is under the discretion of the local governing law to determine which chemicals are permitted to be used. It takes time for scientific findings to percolate through to law. In the meantime, citizens may be subjected to exposure to chemicals that are known to be injurious to the health, but that are not yet proclaimed illegal for use. And companies dealing in different countries may know this very well and exploit it to sell products in ways that suit them, rather than in the best interests of the consumer.The particular products cited in these articles is certainly of interest, but there are other products on sale that almost certainly contain similar chemicals. As an example, soft plastics are much more widely available than they used to be even a year or two ago. And they’re used in a vast range of products. If they contain these chemicals then it would be wise to avoid bringing too many of them into our routine use. If in doubt, it’s worth finding out, or, if investigation is too difficult or time-consuming, to at least avoid them whenever possible rather than to blindly purchase them.Ultimately we choose where and how to spend our money. If we select wisely we might at least minimize our risk for illness in the future. If we’re already experiencing physical discomfort, such as asthma or chemical sensitivity for example, we might be able to reduce the symptoms if we stop using these and similar products.It’s hard to fathom the possibility of being ill when we’re well, even if we’ve been ill before. It seems to be part of the human psyche to feel invincible and strong. But when something hits us, we soon realize our frailty.