Please send this to everyone you know who still uses poisonous sprays!
Read it for yourself - and prevent potential serious health challenges...
What's been used on the real estate in your home & area???
Jan Jenson Pesticide Poisoning Inside the Home On November 29, 1996, our family - Joe
Crozier, wife Yvette Maiangowi, and four-year-old son James - moved into a home in
Scottsdale, Arizona that we had bought the month before. We were healthy when we moved in,
but over the next few months we all became sick with many serious ailments, including
respiratory and neurological problems.
At first we thought these were caused by pollens, molds or dust, so we had the carpets and
air ducts cleaned, replaced the old heating and air-conditioning equipment with a new
air-source heat pump, installed a HEPA-type filter and UV light at the heat pump's intake
(the light kills mold spores), and thoroughly cleaned the home, including disinfecting the
walls and ceilings in the bedrooms and bathrooms. None of this worked; our symptoms
worsened.
On May 20, 1997 Joe saw a medical doctor who specializes in environmental illness (EI). He
diagnosed pesticide poisoning. He said we would find many small holes in the home's slab,
through which someone had sprayed pesticides that were outgassing and poisoning us. We
checked underneath the carpets and found about fifty unsealed 1/4-inch holes drilled
through the concrete foundation, mostly in the master bedroom and James' bedroom.
During the next few weeks we removed the carpets, scrubbed down the floor, and started
sealing the holes with premixed concrete. While doing this, our symptoms became so severe
that on June 15, 1997 we were forced to evacuate the home. We never moved back.
Clinical evaluation and laboratory tests showed that chemicals had damaged our immune
systems. We all had abnormally high blood levels of xylene, a neurotoxic solvent
frequently used as an "inert" ingredient in pesticides.
An environmental engineer found airborne Dursban, a neurotoxic pesticide.
She also measured soil concentrations of Dursban, in two places near the bedrooms, 2.5 and
8.5 times the Arizona Administrative Code limits.
Arizona Structural Pest Control Commission records showed that on nine occasions from
March 3, 1993 to November 2, 1995, a pesticide company hired by the previous owner sprayed
more than 758 gallons of five different pesticides - in the attic, in the walls, and under
the foundation. This included 370 gallons of Dursban TC (termiticide concentrate). The
previous owner's wife died in the home in March 1995.
Our doctor put us on a chemical detoxification program using nutritional supplements. On
his recommendation we switched to organic foods to minimize further poisoning by
pesticides. We tested allergic to numerous foods and inhalants, and started immunotherapy.
We can only tolerate low-toxicity cleaning products in the apartment where we're living at
present, and must operate air purifiers continually in the apartment and in Joe's car to
stay symptom-free.
Despite all this, we're still not healthy. We've all developed sensitivities to many
substances that never bothered us before, including perfume, conventional cleaning
products, swimming-pool chlorine, phenol, formaldehyde, and the pesticides in widespread
use throughout the Phoenix area. Our respiratory and neurological symptoms recur if we
stray too much from our rotation-elimination diets. Progress has been slowest for James.
Last year we were forced to conclude that his immune system was damaged so badly that he
could never adapt well enough to the highly toxic Phoenix environment to recover. Yvette
took him back to Canada in July 1999. His symptoms are somewhat reduced there, but he will
need years of medical treatment and strict control of his living environment before he
recovers fully, if ever.
No government agency - federal, state, county, municipal - has helped us.
They all say they have no authority or jurisdiction in these matters. This situation has
cost us many tens of thousands of dollars. Prolonged acute pesticide poisoning is
associated with many long-term health problems, and the cost of coping with these is much
higher still. In October 1998 a real estate appraiser told us the home is uninhabitable,
worthless. Our savings ran out three months ago - we're now bankrupt. And each month
without medical treatment increases the probability that our immune system damage will be
permanent.
Conclusions and Questions The realtor committed a material breach of the purchase/sale
contract. He failed to disclose to us that the home was so badly contaminated by
pesticides that it was uninhabitable.
The pest control company committed the tort of negligence by spraying the home
top-to-bottom with more than 758 gallons of highly neurotoxic chemicals, and failing to
take prudent and reasonable precautions to prevent these poisons from contaminating the
home's living spaces.
Because the aforementioned refused to take responsibility for injuring us, our family's
health is devastated, our finances destroyed, our future opportunities and prospects
grimly diminished, and our life together as a family disrupted beyond recognition.
For their failure to have justice served in this case, whether due to inability or apathy,
we give almost all municipal, county, state, and federal officials with whom we've dealt,
a grade of F.
For their total failure to have justice served in this case, despite clear, complete, and
convincing evidence that the realtor and pest control company are guilty of injuring us,
we give each person in the legal profession with whom we have dealt, a grade of F.
Each new home in central Arizona has 400 to 500 gallons of organophosphate pesticides
under its foundation. Older homes had 150 to 250 gallons of persistent chlorinated
pesticides initially sprayed under their foundations. These substances are extremely
neurotoxic by design and immunotoxic in behavior - in essence, they're
chemically-engineered assassins.
A significant percentage of Arizona homes have defects such as cracks in their foundations
that provide paths through which pesticide vapors can enter and contaminate living spaces.
A US Air Force study published in 1987 found that 7% of homes surveyed had dangerously
high levels of chlordane, a chlorinated pesticide that remains neurotoxic for decades. Due
to the widespread use in the last 12 years of organophosphate pesticides - close relatives
of the nerve gas poisons developed by the Nazis - a similar study done today would almost
certainly reveal an even higher percentage of homes poisoned with a mixture of toxic
gases.
If as few as 10% of the homes in the Phoenix area are dangerously contaminated, that
equals 100,000 homes; 100,000 poisoned children, many of whom may have suffered
irreparable damage to their central nervous systems and immune systems by the time they
start school.
Nationwide, millions of children are at high risk.
Convincing medical and epidemiological evidence links pesticide poisoning with long-term
neurological illnesses such as depression, headaches, reduced concentration and decision-
making abilities, visual disturbances, memory impairment, neurobehavioral effects;
allergies and asthma; sensitivity to chemical odors previously tolerated; immune system
diseases.
Better pest management methods exist - have existed for decades. Compared with methods
based on pesticides such as Dursban, these alternatives are as effective. Non-toxic.
Cheaper.
Decontaminating the existing housing stock will be a daunting task. The problem worsens
daily. To fail to immediately switch to safer pest control methods will not only impose
major, unnecessary economic burdens on those who will live in our communities in the
future, but also condemn uncounted children to needless suffering.
Can we hope for progress? 34 months after being driven from our home, 12 government
departments and 200 lawyers later, with evidence of causation and liability so complete
and convincing that a top EPA health statistician - the nation's expert on the
epidemiology of Dursban poisoning - declared the quality of our documentation to be
"excellent,"
are we any closer to seeing justice served for ourselves and our son?
If justice is not done in our case, what hope is there for all the people injured by
pesticides who don't know in detail who, what, when, where or how it happened? Who may not
even realize their illnesses are due to pesticides? Public service employees won't help
these people. Lawyers won't help these people. Who will help them?
For more information, see http://www.PoisonedInParadise.com. Contact us at the addresss
below. Please help us set a precedent. Help save millions of kids from the ordeals of
pesticide poisoning.
Correspondence:
JTCrozier@PoisonedInParadise.com YMaiangowi@PoisonedInParadise.com Did you know:
. The same airborne poisons covered by the 1990 Clean Air Act outdoors are usually present
at much higher levels inside the average American home.
. The law does not cover indoor air quality, even though Americans spend
95% of their time indoors.
. The government won't do anything to help people who are poisoned by pesticides in their
homes.
chart here Source: Everyday Exposure to Toxic Pollutants. Wayne R. Ott & John W.
Roberts in Scientific American, Feb. 1998.
. The ai in our home had Dursban (chlorpyrifos) at concentrations of 660 and 2,000
nanograms per m3.
There are natural pesticides, and also electronic pest repellers are practical.
-- Jan Jenson - Nutrition and Kids associate Ph 704-871-2642 ? Toll Free 1-888-791-8381
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