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Although traveler safety is a chief reason for keeping roadside vegetation under control, accidental exposure to herbicide drift or residue can be life-threatening to a whole class of people who have come to be known as the chemically disabled.
Controversy rages within the health profession about the existence of what is often described as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS). But a recent survey conducted by the state Department of Health Services found that of adult Californians, 16.9% - or as many as four million people - believe that they display symptoms of sensitivity to chemicals. Of these, 6.4% or as many as 1.5 million people, have been medically diagnosed with MCS.
This means that one in six adult travelers could be especially sensitive to the adverse health effects of roadside spraying.
Increasing numbers of medical scientists are giving MCS closer scrutiny. They are motivated in part by the sheer volume of people complaining about this modern environmental illness. What confuses these investigators is the vast array of symptoms described by people suffering from MCS. The variation may be linked to genetic differences among people, by the great diversity of chemicals to which they can be exposed and by the patterns and timing of those exposures.
Many who suffer from MCS describe pesticides, including herbicides, as particularly irritating to their condition. For these individuals, exposure to these agents can trigger illness or even life-threatening reactions.
One particular concern for people who suffer from chemical sensitivity is that travel on public roads can at times be extremely hazardous. The actions of government agencies which use toxic chemicals threatens the health of many members of the public.
Three individuals who suffer from MCS agreed to be interviewed for this report. Two asked that, to protect their privacy, their names and those of the towns where they live be concealed. Their stories are included because they have been diagnosed with MCS to a standard high enough to convince authorities that they are indeed disabled.
Carla's Journey
Those who have been diagnosed with a form of MCS are the lucky ones - many know that exposures to chemicals can make them ill but find diagnosis difficult for their sometimes "weird" symptoms.
One who does know what it is that makes her ill is Carla, once a healthy woman who worked for a county department of education as a speech therapist for disabled children. Now she too is disabled, diagnosed with Acquired Toxic Porphyroinopathy, a disease that appears to have a genetic basis and to remain latent until activated by chemical exposure. Exposure to any amount of several classes of chemicals disrupts her liver's ability to manufacture detoxifying enzymes, producing instead substances that cause her to become acutely ill.
Now living on insurance benefits, Carla's disability was confirmed by painful chemical challenge tests which involved being exposed to minute quantities of toxic chemicals while her reactions were recorded.
"Have you ever seen a cockroach when it was sprayed?" she asks. "It's not a pretty sight. Well, I'm that cockroach if I'm just near most pesticides. I lose control of my motor functions and get severe muscle spasms that look like epileptic seizures. And it can take anywhere from a week to three months to recover."
Carla's job had required extensive travel on rural roads to visit far-flung clients. But she learned one day that moving freely through the modern world was no longer something she could take for granted.
"One time I visited a client without knowing that agricultural spraying was occurring nearby. I had to be carried away in an ambulance," she says. After years of medical bills and attempts to understand her condition, Carla's doctor diagnosed her by tests from the Mayo Clinic. To avoid episodes of illness, she has learned to make her way carefully through daily life, avoiding exposures that can trigger an attack. But it's not always possible to know what's around the corner.
"You never know when you're going to see those damn highway spray trucks," said Carla. "I've tried arranging notification by Caltrans in advance of spraying, but it didn't work out. You'd think that the right of the public to travel freely would override the right of the highway department to spray poisons. It's really a disability issue, that chemically sensitive people can't travel safely because of this indiscriminate spraying."
U-Turn to Safety
Another person who has become painfully alert to the dangers of roadside spraying is Selene, a cheerful mother of two preteens. Although Selene looks healthy, her activities are highly constrained by a form of chemical sensitivity that has been documented by both the medical establishment and the courts.
Selene has been diagnosed as having Reactive Airway Disease, a condition that blocks her air intake if she encounters even the tiniest dose of toxic chemicals - even those below the threshold of smell. Her illness was also confirmed by painful challenge testing and her breathing capacity diagnosed as 49% of normal. Needless to say, most work environments are hazardous to Selene and it has been determined by a court of law that she is completely disabled.
"When I came into the courtroom, the judge did not believe me," Selene reminisced. "But there was the odor of a chemical fragrance in the room. Within minutes, before the judge's very eyes, I changed from a calm, coherent person to a desperately ill person gasping for breath. The judge and the lawyer were horrified; they thought I was going to die right there in the courtroom. So did I."
Selene now receives disability payments. And, because any unknown place may contain enough toxic chemicals to give her a headache or cause her respiratory passages to constrict, she is forced to carry oxygen wherever she goes.
She arranges in advance as much of the necessary activities of daily living as possible, trying never to get herself into any situation where she can't leave immediately if it becomes necessary. Traveling to the doctor, school or market can be unpredictable and menacing for Selene because Caltrans sprays herbicides along the one road to town on several occasions each year without announcement of when and where this will occur.
"You never know when they're going to spray," she remarked. "I could come around a bend and encounter a spray truck. It's better on a straightaway where I can see up ahead. If there is an exit nearby I can get off the road immediately - but once I made a U-turn right there on the freeway when there wasn't an exit. I knew it was illegal and dangerous - but it was better than risking an exposure and then not being able to breathe."
Spray Flu
One victim of roadside spraying is Cindy Taylor, recovered to help lead the fight to stop the practice in northern Humboldt County, where she lives.
She was born in a remote village located in the heart of timberland where company planes "managed" unwanted trees by spraying herbicides. Clouds of chemicals often rained down on local residents as the planes flew overhead. Cindy was born with a harelip, which she thinks may have resulted from an in utero exposure. Further suffering came when she was an adult.
"I was 24 years old, eight months pregnant, healthy and in great shape, eating right, exercising, doing everything you were supposed to," she recalls. "While I was walking on a freeway frontage near our home one day, a Caltrans spray truck went by. I was drenched in chemicals. By the time I got home, I was terribly ill."
Cindy's doctor diagnosed her with having a sudden onset of toxemia and suspected a link to the toxic exposure. With only a few weeks to go before delivery, she feared for the life of her baby. She contacted Caltrans and learned that she had been exposed to a brew of herbicides mixed with a chemical surfactants.
After her baby was born, Cindy continued to suffer debilitating health problems that had started with the toxemia. Her son, born a short time after the episode, suffered an unusual array of illnesses in his early years, including chronically swollen glands and abnormally sensitive skin.
While it's impossible to prove that roadside herbicides hurt Cindy and her son, there's no doubt in her mind about what happened.
So after inquiring among her neighbors, Cindy learned that others had become ill at the same time she had. She wrote and distributed a brochure titled "Spray Flu" and got together with others to demand an end to roadside spraying. First the county government and then later Caltrans quit using chemicals to control vegetation in her community, and turned instead to mowing and tolerating a less manicured look.
"There isn't a weed that's so dangerous that people should be exposed to toxic chemicals when they're using a public road. It's just not worth it to take the chance of hurting someone," says Cindy.
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