Your Neighbourhood Toxic Waste Dump

Yanks, do you know exactly what's in your neighbourhood? Besides the homes, stores and people, I mean?

Well, there's a handy little online service you should be very interested in. Brought to you by the EPA, it has a friendly, innocuous enough name: EviroMapper for Envirofacts. So, let's enter a zip code for, say, a few blocks in Buffalo, NY to see what we come up with.

Take a minute to have a look at that map.

I'll bet you never imagined so many hazardous waste sites could be located in such a concentrated, residential area. No. Neither did I.

I found the link to that site in a book I'm currently reading, The Autoimmune Epidemic, by Donna Jackson Nakazawa. It was recommended to me by a young mother I met recently who has Sjorgens when she found out that I have lupus (and fibromyalgia). The book is an eye opener so far - no doubt about that.

What's the connection between autoimmune disorders like lupus and hazardous waste sites, you ask? This 2007 article in The New Scientist, Lupus cluster at oilfield points finger at pollution, offers an example of the growing concerns:

An alarmingly high number of people living in houses built on top of a disused oilfield in New Mexico have been diagnosed with the autoimmune disease lupus. It is the latest in a growing number of lupus clusters near polluted areas, and points towards the environmental triggers for this complex disease.

When someone has lupus their immune system turns against them, attacking their own tissues, which can lead to joint pain, organ failure and even death. In the US, it is much more common in women and minority groups, especially African Americans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, estimates that the incidence of the disease has tripled in the past 40 years.

Pollutants seem to be the cause of lupus in people on a housing development in Hobbs, New Mexico, built in 1976 on land that was an active oilfield until the late 1960s. The community noticed an unusually high rate of lupus and contacted James Dahlgren, an environmental toxicologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dahlgren and his colleagues compared the prevalence of lupus in the Hobbs development to its prevalence in the general population and found that the rate of lupus in the Hobbs population was 30 to 99 times higher than estimates for the general population. "The rate is astronomically high," says Dahlgren. "It's a true cluster." All the cases in Hobbs occurred in several blocks of houses built on top of a waste pit.

As an Albertan, I have to wonder aloud if any such findings have been uncovered or even investigated in this oil-rich province.

The article also addresses what the residents of that Buffalo neighbourhood mapped above had to deal with - the case is more thoroughly outlined in the book by Jackson Nakazawa.

Other clusters of lupus have been documented in people exposed to industrial emissions, solvents and pesticides for a long time. A study under way in Buffalo, New York, has recorded 92 cases of lupus in an area near a lead-smelting plant that closed in the 1980s. Lead, mercury and arsenic are among the pollutants found at the site, says Edith Williams, a project coordinator for the study.

Behind each one of those numbers is someone like me who has had to deal with multiple, seemingly unrelated symptoms - several debilitating on their own - for years or even decades as I did. In my case, the diagnosis of lupus came by accident when, concerned about a small lump I'd found in my neck, my doctor sent me for a blood test that signaled lupus - a disease that, at that point, I knew absolutely nothing about even though it was clear to the rheumatologist I saw after the diagnosis that I had symptoms going back to my teen years.

There still is no definitive cause for lupus and there is no cure. But research is definitely pointing to genetic and/or environmental factors. Yet, as Jackson Nakazawa notes on her site:

The fact that the average American woman is eight times more likely to have autoimmune disease than breast cancer

Think about that when you see all of the advertizing coming at you from every direction these days to find that elusive cure for breast cancer (my best to all of you affected by cancer) while comparing that to the absolute silence about diseases and disorders most likely caused by environmental factors.

A political issue?

Absolutely no doubt about it.

Especially when there are corporations to protect from public scrutiny (<< must read news about the oilsands polluter, Suncor).

What can you do? Support research. Get involved. Make noise. Help someone who's sick. Rail against the polluters. Buy (authentic) organic. Live green. Learn more.

Protect yourself and your loved ones.

At the very least - care.

(On a personal note, I've just been too exhausted to blog lately and the daily depressingly dry economic news hasn't exactly been a motivator either. zzzzzzzzzzzzz... And I've been rather disgusted with the corporate sector lately, to say the least.)


Related:

Environment Canada's Chemical Substances site. No handy map feature there.

The NIH's list of Environmental Diseases from A to Z. (Oh, look. There's lupus.)

A link from that NIH page goes to several article links on Environews.
 

Apparently, I do have a spine

Unlike the Democrats. *cough cough*

So, I made my way to my doctor's this morning and then went for xrays of my knees, hips and (thoracic) spine. Every time I went by a Calgary Sun newspaper box I could see Harper's beady eyes staring out at me over the caption "So sue me" which, I assume, referred to the Atlantic Accord promise that he broke. I've been out of the news loop the past few days (and there's no way I'm buying a Sun newspaper) so I see I missed another huge Steve Scandal (tm).

Harper, meanwhile, signaled his impatience with allegations from Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald that the government was reneging on its commitment to his province. MacDonald pulled the plug on talks with Ottawa over the weekend.

"If you are really serious in the allegation that we have broken a contract, then I think you have to follow that allegation up with action," Harper said during a joint news conference in Ottawa with Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

Harper warned that if the province didn't take legal action, the federal government "will consult tribunals ourselves" in order to secure a ruling on whether it is respecting the accord. His spokeswoman, Carolyn Stewart Olsen, would not say what court or tribunal Harper meant.

MacDonald shot back that Nova Scotia will "not be bullied," and that the court that matters in this case is the "court of public opinion." He warned that Harper's intransigence would cost the federal government political support in Nova Scotia and elsewhere in the next election.

Danny Williams, premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, mocked Harper's challenge to decide the issue in court, dismissing the legal route as too time consuming.

"I find it really ridiculous for a prime minister of a country to turn around and say, 'Sue me or I'll sue you,'" Williams said in an interview.

Frankly, I think someone should take him up on his offer and sue him...for something...anything. Arrogant ass that he is. I got back home in time to catch the budget bill vote and the fact that even though Nova Scotia Tory MP Gerald Keddy had a little tantrum, he still voted for the budget anyway. Danny Williams should take him out to the woodshed for a good talking to.

Time for summer holidays now?

Control freakish Steve's antics reminded me of this article I read on Philip Slater's site the other nite: "Temporary Insanity: The World in Transition". It's interesting. Check it out and read it all the way through. (That's an order.) Here's a snippet:

This attempt to control nature was an addictive drug, requiring bigger and bigger hits. For before long it’s not just plants and animals and insects that have to be controlled—it’s other people. And ultimately, yourself. Control requires a lot of splitting—ourselves from the earth, ourselves from other people—from ‘enemies’—and our egos from our bodies, our feelings, our instincts. “Control yourself, child!” becomes the core of childrearing.

In the 18th century, what I call Control Culture began to be challenged—just as it was reaching its peak. But before discussing its challenger I want to say a few words about how this system—so familiar to us all—operates.

If your life revolves around getting control--over Nature, other people, and your own body and feelings--you can't look at the world around you as one great indissoluble, ever-changing Unity. How could you ever control such a thing? So Control Culture tended to split it up ("divide and conquer"), to see the world as a static collection of paired opposites: friend/enemy, master/slave, mind/body, man/nature, aristocrat/peasant, good/evil. It was a world that fit the Bible and Newton's Clockwork Universe equally well.

Another problem for the Controller is that living things aren't all that crazy about being controlled, so you're going to have to fight a lot. Control Culture was a warrior culture--competitive, belligerent, macho. And a culture based on war tends to be authoritarian. Slaves and serfs have to be kept in line, and fighting men--trained to be competitive and quarrelsome--have to be controlled. So rigid hierarchies with rigid rules of behavior became the norm. And because war was viewed as the most noble masculine profession, parents raised their boys to be 'from Mars'--that is, stoic, rigid, and aggressive, while women were expected to specialize in cooperation, intimacy, and nurturance. And since women weren't doing soldierly things they wound up at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Even the lowest serf was expected to dominate his wife.

I mention the position of women last, but in fact it’s the foundation of the entire system. You cannot have an authoritarian, war-like society unless women are devalued and oppressed.

Slater briefly but, I think, effectively touches on the many aspects of our society that constitute this "Control Culture" and concludes that we may well be at a breaking point in history which will usher in a more "Integrative Culture". That's not going to happen overnight, obviously, but it certainly looks more positive than the nightmare we're currently living through.

Which brings me back to my personal situation (in its own little way: temporary insanity, control, breaking point, integration and finally healing). My doctor had a good laugh when I told him about the useless twit of a doctor I saw at the walk-in clinic on Friday who had decided there was nothing he could do for me, so why run tests to find out what was wrong? Gotta love that so-called "logic". Dr "it's the lupus". I'll give him "it's the lupus". I'll bet he voted for Steve and if I had let him ramble on, I'm sure he would have found a way to blame my pain on the Liberals eventually.

Anyway, as I mentioned, my doctor is concerned that I may have a compressed thoracic (rhymes with Jurassic, which is how old I feel) disc which I guess is kind of rare because that area of the spine, which doesn't have the flexibility of the lumbar and cervical spinal areas (I Googled), isn't usually prone to such things unless caused by some sort of injury. Hopefully, he'll find out what's going on with my hip as well. As for my knee (these are all on the right side), I noticed that it's been swollen compared to my left one the past month or so (who knows wtf is going on there??). As I told my doctor when he walked in: I'm a mess. (And don't even ask me about my stress level. Really. Don't.)

I had to stop taking the heavier painkillers (Toradol™) because they can cause kidney damage (apparently) so you can only be on them for 5 days (and "the lupus" affects my kidneys). Maybe my head will clear up a bit so I can actually think now as well - although the pills did help a bit with the pain. Now I'm back to regular ibuprofen and Tylenol™. According to the new teevee commercials, the people who make Tylenol ™ "LOVE" it. They're freaks. There's been too much "loving" stuff and products in commercials lately. I find it nauseating. Do the people who make the anti-nausea pills "LOVE" them too? Should I fucking care?

Alrighty then.

So, there you have it. I should have my test results by Monday (maybe?). If everything looks fine, I'll be (secretly) paging Dr Kevorkian (wouldn't want to make him violate his probation publicly) because everything isn't fine, obviously.

Pain sucks. Chronic pain - even more so. Thanks to those of you who have shared your aches and pains with me too. There are so many of us. You can just never tell what's going on behind a person's screen name. (Maybe now you know why I'm so damn cranky sometimes. Okay. Well I'm like that naturally too - but that's beside the point...).
 

Open Thread

Off to emerg with me today. I've had so much pain in my neck and right shoulder the past 2 days that I can barely get around. I strongly resemble the hunchback of Notre Dame. Arthritis? Ruptured disc? I don't know. All I do know is that this is unbearable.

It's been a bad week with a lot of pain in my right hip too from the humidity. My regulars know that I have fibromyalgia and lupus (which can come with a lot of complications), so it isn't like I'm not used to living with chronic pain. That makes it hard to figure out if the pain I'm experiencing is par for the course that might just disappear tomorrow. I rarely go for extra medical help since I'm used to having to cope with the symptoms, but I feel like I have a knife in my back so I guess I should probably find out what's up.

I'll update you later on. First I have to suffer my way through a shower and then I'm off.

Hope your day/week is going a lot better than mine!

Update: What a day. I just met the second most aggravating doctor I have had the serious misfortune to encounter in my life. I'll write more about it later - maybe. In the meantime though, I still don't know exactly what's wrong because this useless doctor (whom I saw in a walk-in clinic after I decided I might not be able to sit through hours of pain waiting in emerg) refused to do any tests. No xrays. No blood work. Nothing. "It's the lupus". "You seem depressed."

Well, screw you.

Update #2 - after my nap:

I swear that was the most ridiculous doctor I have ever met.

Gems:

"If what you're telling me is true."

"You're just growing up." (I'm 47 years old.)

"I don't want to send you for tests if you're in pain since you're using the bus. Even if you had a car, I wouldn't send you."

That, along with telling me that I wanted "magic". Repeatedly asking me what I wanted him to do. My answer: "tell me what's wrong and what my options are -it's not like I can rely on Google - you are a doctor".

As for his "it's the lupus" bullshit - all the while claiming he has lupus too - he should know, one would think, that all kinds of problems can come up with lupus that aren't just "the lupus" and that require further investigation through those things called "tests". Why was an xray too much to fucking ask for??

Seriously. When I realized he wasn't going to do squat to at least find out what it was, I suddenly burst into tears because he was telling me it was hopeless. (I was thinking "fuck, I'm in pain and you don't even want to investigate it??) That's when the "you seem depressed" so "I'll give you an antidepressant" came up. If his fucking center or he had even taken a history they would have known I've been on an antidepressant for years for a complicated history of depression, including PTSD, and that upping my dosage was absolutely pointless and unnecessary.

Oh, and he tried to prescribe me Tylenol 3s when I had clearly written on my chart that I'm allergic to codeine. I made it very clear to him that I was not there for drugs - that I've been clean for 20 bloody years - and didn't want any drugs from him. I wanted a proper diagnosis. He told me I had "facet pain". Well, no shit Sherlock. I could have told him that. What I wanted to know was exactly what was causing it.

I wanted to know exactly what was wrong since my entire right fucking side from neck to knee has been causing me excruciating pain - worse than ever before - this week. I had also discovered that lupus can actually cause bone death in things like one's hip joints, but I guess that's nothing to concern myself about since it's just "the lupus".

Fuck.

When I walked out of there, I was in absolute shock.

Just before I'd been called in the office, I heard one woman say to another that "that Dr So and So is nuts". I'm sure now that she was talking about this guy.

I will be getting his name and sending in a complaint.

Oh - forgot to add. He asked me why I didn't go to my doctor.

1. My doctor's office isn't open today and I was in no shape to go anywhere yesterday after this hit, let alone on a transit ride on a bus and train of over an hour to his office. (I recently moved further from his office than I used to be.)

2. Just moved into this area so I chose a 5 min bus ride to that clinic.

3. I had called the clinic beforehand and she told me to be seen by a doctor there who could decide if I needed to go to emerg (along with not wanting to wait forever in emerg. Been there, done that with severe kidney pain and bleeding. No thanks.)

So here I am tonite. Still in pain and mad. Mad that he basically told me to just live with it without knowing what's causing it or how bad it is - without even a referral to physio or any other kind of treatment. I'm not a happy camper.

I know I have lupus. I know there's no cure for that thing called lupus. I do know, however, that problems related to lupus can at least be diagnosed and treated. Treating me like some depressed, lying, clueless patient who hasn't accepted that she's ill for life is not proper treatment.

I'll go see my doctor next week. In the meantime, if the pain is still too much, I will go to emerg.