eBook Chemical and Electrical Hypersensitivity: A Sufferer's Memoir download

This is the book we’ve been waiting for --a first hand account of the devastating health effects some people experience from modern chemicals and electrical fields. Evans was a healthy, high-performing computer engineer when, at age 35, he began to experience headaches, dizziness, lethargy and other disabling symptoms after exposures to common substances such as cleaning products, exhaust fumes, mold, perfumes, and even electrical fields.. Assuming this would be a temporary problem, he searched for medical help, only to discover that allergy medicines were of no avail, and his condition was not recognized by mainstream doctors. Help was finally forthcoming at the Environmental Health Center in Dallas, where he was diagnosed with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities.

This vivid and engaging memoir recounts tests and treatments Evans received and his constant battle of wits to secure a safe environment in an increasingly polluted world, finally settling in a remote area of the Arizona desert. “Chemical and Electrical Hypersensitivity” provides a beacon of understanding and hope for the growing number of people around the world suffering unacknowledged health damage from exposure to ever-increasing chemicals and electronic smog in their environments.

This book is an extraordinary account of one man's frightening journey into the morass of extreme chemical and electrical sensitivity, told with compassion, humor and courage.

This is not an informational book in the strict sense, but reads like a novel as you follow his almost unbelievable journey from productive, healthy, hard working, tax-paying computer consultant, to being reduced to living in what was essentially a refugee camp, unable to interact with any form of technology, the rest of the world and at times even some of those in the camp.

The experiences which Mr. Evans retails would easily break the spirit of most people (and the accounts of the suicides he has witnessed amongst others in the same situation are tragic), yet the acceptance and detached amusement he brings to his absurdly difficult situation makes the book a delight to read. Science fiction could never be this good!

While there are now a number of excellent books on the biological and medical aspects of chemical sensitivity (such as Pamela Reed Gibson's "Multiple Chemical Sensitivity"), which include basic instructions on how to clean up your life to avoid becoming chemically sensitive yourself, very few have addressed what actually happens to the daily life of a person who becomes so sensitized they can no longer function in mainstream society. This book helps fill that gap, and portrays in excruciating detail exactly how a person's life can unravel so totally when they become severely chemically and electrically sensitive through absolutely no fault of their own. I think people are afraid to look at or hear about this in too much detail and the amount of denial around this situation is huge.

Thank you Mr. Evans for giving us a true insider's look at these misunderstood and stigmatized conditions. There needs to be so much more government regulation of chemical and electrical exposures for the general public, or more and more people will find themselves in this exact same situation -- no one is immune. Let this be a wake-up call to those in government and anyone else who thinks this is not a problem of growing and ominous proportions. It CAN (and just might) happen to you or someone you love.

There is much to recommend this book but there is one huge flaw. He takes us through 220 plus pages of suffering, sometimes harrowing (describing people who commit suicide, or every detail of trying to apply for disability) and then, he collapses years in Dolan Springs into a very short space. He describes Dolan Springs well, but compared to the rest of the book, skims over the good and bad of his life in that house. He doesn't explain how he managed to sleep on a porch for 4 years there, without a space heater, on very cold winter nights. He really gives short shrift to his life once he has his disability pension, and then, *most frustrating*, when he leaves the house, simply says that he had an exit plan, and built a house in northern arizona, and it worked. His final success in finding a safe house is given just a few lines.

Duh what? You take us through all that suffering, times when your economics were so tight you could barely afford a $16,000 trailer that you didn't buy, were reactive in all places and often slept outside in a tent, and then don't tell us 1) how you got the money to build a home and 2) who you found to do it, how you chose healthy materials, if you made any mistakes, if you tolerated it right off the bat, how life is for you now?

He just skips the solution, the healing, the thing we all want to know about. That was extremely disappointing!!!! I hope in a future edition he adds another 30-50 pp because everybody wants to know how others solved their problems, so that if they have similar problems, they can learn. For instance, he's so electrically sensitive it takes a great deal of effort for him to adapt a car so he can drive it. He measures milligaus on many cars, and even very low ones bother him, he finally finds one where he can disconnect the electricity, including some kind of magnet, and drive the car though he doesn't have dashboard lights or turn signals etc, but this works for him. Seeing him go through this process is interesting and enlightening. So, why he stopped short of telling us how he adapted to his years in Dolan Springs in far more detail, what was wrong in the house, what symptoms he had, what porch sleeping for 4 years was like, how he managed, and most importantly, as I said before, how he obtained the funds to actually build a house and the whole process of determining what materials were safe to build, whether he was on site for it, or where he lived if he wasn't, how he tested materials, who designed it, how experienced that person and the builders were, how he chose the area he moved to, whether he could tolerate the house right away, and on and on----why wouldn't he tell this part as it's the most important!!

Otherwise, there's much to recommend. The author seems a cheerful and curious type, approaching his situation like an engineer, so he doesn't really wallow in the horror of his situation, although a few chapters go into a sort of activist-mode, trying to use analogies and metaphors to explain how difficult this illness is, and I skipped those. He often had helpers, so he must have a cheerful and easygoing disposition, because people often went out of their way for him.

I never really knew what sent him on his downward spiral, and wondered whether he'd originally had toxic mold in his home unbeknownst to him.

His description of Seagoville was the most interesting part of the book, and his years there. It's much like I might have imagined it, and he depicts the problems with group living among EI's really well. This illness tends to make people necessarily selfish--protecting their own health first, even if it causes problems for others, which is why group living is not a realistic approach for most.

There are times for instance he has to vacate his room, or walk around for hours until 9 pm at night when the next door neighbor EI agrees to turn off his a/c, or sleep in a tent or in the "oasis" or "cage"--a small outdoor room made by a former EI there, which has mesh "walls", a concrete block base, and a small roof. I've seen pictures of it on the web and he describes it well. He was so electrically sensitive if someone would move in near him who'd run air conditioners, he couldn't be in his place. He also describes the problems with laundry--when new EI's come with contaminated clothes that contaminate the washers, or hog the washers and dryers.

He also confirms that metal, especially metal floors, amplifies ES. I've always wondered whether metal/porcelain trailers could cause ES in formerly okay people. Especially ones with metal floors. However, at some point he says tile floors and metal walls are okay, which makes me conclude that is how his current safe house is built, or perhaps foiled walls.

Again, to ask the reader to go through all the minute details of all the bad stuff, along with overcoming the challenges, and leave us to imagine the part where he finds the money to build a safe house, and manages to do it, a feat beyond the capacity of most, is really disappointing.

It is an enjoyable read, until the disappointing end, which perhaps he can correct by adding on in a future edition.