Documents attached to bibliography entries

In addition to modifications to make the physical environment more accessible, there is a need to consider the overall built environment, given the growing number of people affected by environmental exposures—a physical condition that is triggered by the environment.

Symptoms include neurological, respiratory, muscular, cardiovascular, and/or gastrointestinal problems. Known triggers include the following:

● Pesticides: weed killers, bug sprays, treated wood products
● Solvents: paints, glues, gasoline, nail polish/remover
● Indoor air Volatile Organic Compounds: new carpet, formaldehyde, plasticizers, chlorine, fragrances and fragranced products
● Cleaners: bleach, ammonia, phenolic disinfectants, air fresheners
● Combustion-related: auto and diesel exhaust, tobacco smoke, natural gas, tar/asphalt
● Drugs/medical devices: anesthetics, antibiotics, implants, vaccines
● Electrical devices: microwaves, transformers, high-tension wires, fluorescent lighting, cell towers, cell phones

These triggers can be in the housing unit, elsewhere in the building if a multifamily unit, and/or outside it in the immediate community as well as in locations the person needs to or would like to visit in daily life. While some of these products are used in development of housing (and buildings in general), many are introduced by people through the care and maintenance of buildings as well as by people being in the building (e.g., someone wearing perfume). Current estimates suggest that 11 percent of the population has some sort of chemical sensitivity.

For people with environmental sensitivities, accessible housing must be free of these environmental triggers. However, unless the housing is universally designed to accommodate all the different sensitivities, for some it is better to live in segregated housing that assures control over potential exposures.

List of questions which, if asked, will reveal where provinces and territories are violating or not enforcing laws related to persons with environmental sensitivities. These questions were first developed for the people in the federal government who claim to encourage conformity, within Canada, to international commitments Canada has made.

Thomson reiterates findings of 1985 Ontario Ministry of Health report, comments on how progress had been made, but that things have slipped back to where they were before his committee's report was written. He forwards the idea that protection issues are hidden behind a legitimate but separate debate.

Health officials were making statements they knew or ought to have known were contributing to injuries and deaths, directly in contravention of direction from the DM of health in 1987, not to mention various studies, reports and consumer representations.

Mac Harb has been said to have sensitivities. If he does, he is identifying with a subgroup, ignoring the actual history of sensitivities, putting forward revisionist information from the cult of environmental medicine. Certainly his understanding is less than that demonstrated by fellow MP Paul McCrossan.

Baird confuses fact of sensitivities not being caused by one disease with fact that sensitivities have been known to medicine for centuries, and with existence of publicly insured method of diagnosis. Then, after getting the basics wrong, he lists a number of positive things that are being done by government to help persons with sensitivities.

Leznof was well known for subjecting persons with sensitivities to a reverse onus in clinical settings, i.e. placing the presumption on the wrong side with respect to their experience of repeatable, controllable circumstances.

Joe Krop's supporters helped turn the media against us. They told the media that CPSO did not believe sensitivities were real, which was false. They were parroting the lie that was often told by doctors of environmental medicine, who told their patients that any criticism of their methods was done only because the CPSO did not believe the health complaint was real.

The damage that was done by the berserk mob that was supporting doctor Krop is incalculable. Journalists believed what they were told by Toronto area consumers, despite the fact that the CPSO had written to every Ontario MPP to tell them that their concerns about Dr. Krop did not reflect a lack of concern about persons with sensitivities, but merely concern about the methods used by doctors of environmental medicine.

It would be hard to calculate the damage that has been done to persons with sensitivities by the cult of environmental medicine.

Arthur Leznoff had made a significant contribution to the exclusion, injury and unnecessary killing of persons with sensitivities. His arbitrary dismissal of environmental sensitivities had no place in publicly funded research. On the other hand, Health Canada had contributed to the unnecessary killing of thousands of Canadians with sensitivities. For bigots who had reasserted control of the issue in the federal health department, Leznoff's involvement was welcome.

In the mid 1990's, AEHA Ottawa produced some excellent educational materials. This one was designed to encourage the accommodation of workers.

Between 1991 and 1998, the Ottawa Branch of AEHA had several professionals on the board who had experience with other issues and organizations. A lot of educational materials were produced and distributed, many of them picked up by other branches across Canada.

A very wise warning from Nova Scotia. Rose Featherstone sabotaged the position taken by AEHA's official representatives with federal political parties, sabotaged the constitutional operation of AEHA's national board and was, almost as much as doctors of environmental medicine, responsible for the demise and fragmentation of the national organization of persons with sensitivities in Canada.

HRDC has several responsibilities concerning human rights and disabled persons, but it is easier to pass the buck.

AFN has lots of issues to deal with. Meanwhile, there can be no doubt that, with housing and nutrition conditions, sensitivities are affecting the health of First Nations people across Canada, including a contribution to suicides.

AEHA had professional editor for national publication for a while before the national board and organization imploded. This was the first issue.

The Attorney General of Ontario and public servants in his ministry turned a blind eye on criminal endangerment of children and other vulnerable persons with sensitivities in Ontario.

Gaffney had invited input to a Liberal committee task force on disabilities, she had discussed the issues, she was familiar with the fact that Health and Welfare had been encouraging the protection of persons with sensitivities until 1993. Why did she not mention any of this when raising the issue with a Liberal health minister who was invisibilizing this previous work?

Belanger was helpful, but there was little he could do as Liberal cabinet ministers covered up lethal mistakes made by former health minister Diane Marleau.

Diane Marleau ignored this appeal and dozens of others, and she threw out the work that Health and Welfare had done before 1993, so the people who were supposed to be protected are being injured or killed, instead. Tens of thousands of Canadians with sensitivities have been unnecessarily killed in health care since.

At one time, AEHA was not afraid to speak out about the ongoing abuse of persons with sensitivities in health care.

Let it be known that many people with sensitivities have suffered serious damages as a result of abuse by persons in positions of authority, including, but certainly not limited to people within the Canadian and provincial Human
Rights Commissions.

When even Chris Brown who has devoted his life to trying to get justice done is unable to be heard, you can be quite sure that desperate people are going to focus on survival methods which are more practical than spending years persisting in a process in which they are further discredited and emotionally abused.

It is extremely important to note that Dr. Mahoney became an advocate for children with learning and behavioural disabilities resulting from sensitivities, and spoke at the 1996 National Conference of Children with Sensitivities in 1996. He is an example of a physician, medical leader, who was able to learn and help protect children.

In a 1990 OHRC settlement, the Ottawa Carleton District Health Council promised to keep sensitivities in mind in health planning. They did not do so. Hundreds of local persons with sensitivities have been unnecessarily killed in local health care since. This note was written in 1995, with the hope that the DHC would start keeping its commitment. Even in its subsequent manifestation as the Champlain District Health Council, it never did.

When preventable harm occurs because of attitudes, it is usually a result of misconceptions. In 1995, Health Canada officials were lying about work they had done prior to the 1993 election and, more importantly, they were lying about possessing the information on which that work was based.

Many school boards still think it is appropriate to horrifically abuse children by only dealing with the results of their reactions, not preventing them.

In 1995, AEHA was a national organization, and had branches across Canada. After everyone who had a consumer perspective left the organization in the late 1990's, the organization fractured into fragments across the country.

It is almost unbelievable that, 15 years ago, the attached committee was formed, and the attached motion was passed by AEHA National at AGM Board meeting. Neither were acted on, as Featherstone, Maclennan, Molot, Marshall, Krop, Armstrong crap, pulled the group back to being only a fan club for doctors of environmental medicine.

It was a good committee, and a good motion, but absolutely no follow through.

ALL of the speakers at the AGM were physicians, except one guy at the end of the day who talked about housing renovations. Jerry Ross actually said that the critics of environmental medicine were all saying that it was all in peoples' heads, which was not my experience at all. The function of Ross's comments were to unethically scare consumers into the environmental medicine fold.

It is the meeting where I met Joffres, by demanding an apology from him for saying that sensitivities were not accepted, and that we needed research before they could be accepted. I was so incredibly offended to see that everything that had moved forward before 1993 was being sabotaged, not by the enemy, but by a chapter in NS and others who, in 1995, were where the Ottawa Branch had been in 1983. Nothing invisibilizes history like fanaticism.

There was an incredibly goofy naturopath who had everyone under his spell, convincing them that what they needed, first and foremost, was an acceptance of naturopathy. I sat across from him at lunch and, just before we left, when finished, I asked him to get out of our faces, that he was using us for needs substantiation and setting us back in the process. I think he could tell the level of rage that was behind my quiet but very terse dressing down of him. Eventually he was out of the picture.

At one point, a doctor in the audience whose wife had sensitivities got up and gave me a dressing down for criticising Joffres. He said that "the way things work" was that we needed research, just like we needed Lister before we dealt with infection. I wish I'd known then that the words "infective" and "pestilential" predated Lister by centuries.

After a half decade of acting to protect persons with sensitivities from being killed in the health care system, and excluded or injured there and elsewhere, Diane Marleau fumbled the ball. Abusive attitudes returned to the federal health department.

In 1995, AEHA had representation from across Canada.

NS Environmental Health Centre focuses on one manifestation of sensitivities, perhaps doing a disservice by giving the impression that all persons with sensitivities have the same problem, cause, mechanism.

Despite encouragement and a commitment from previous CMHA Ottawa leaders, the CMHC fumbled the ball on the protection of persons whose central nervous system dysfunction is caused or exacerbated by sensitivities. Abusive attitudes continue in the current national CMHA, despite the fact that previous Ottawa Branch leaders who were familiar with the issues encouraged CMHA National to address the subject. The organization is now invisibilizing the daily suicides of Canadians whose central nervous system dysfunction is caused or exacerbated by environmental sensitivities.

Gowanlock stymied efforts made by Bruce Halliday, MP, and John Davies, a chronic disease epidemiologist in Health and Welfare.

Bob Rae turned his back on concerns about how his officials were contributing to the exclusion, injury and unnecessary killing of persons with sensitivities in Ontario.

Jamieson was an apologist for, or at least an invisibilizer of, lethally abusive attitudes at the Ontario Ministry of Health.

Krauser was helpful, but others at the OMA advocated astonishingly irresponsible and abusive positions, with the exception of Carole Guzman and, in 1996, William Mahoney, the OMA's representative on the Ministry of Education's advisory panel on special needs.

Under Rosemary Brown, the OHRC was preoccupied with racism, ignored the exclusion, injury and killing of persons disabled by environmental sensitivities. OHRC staff were encouraging physicians to subject persons with sensitivities to a reverse onus concerning their experience of repeatable, controllable circumstances.

Grier did not address abuse issues, focused instead on legitimate but separate debate about doctors of environmental medicine.

The CPSO has not protected the public or guided the profession, as the history, rights, needs and well being of persons with sensitivities have been eclipsed behind consideration of the flaky ideas of so-called "doctors of environmental medicine."

The CPA has actively encouraged psychiatrists to think of sensitivities as being caused by mental illness, obscuring centuries of literature, consumer experience, recommendations by various authorities. Mapping prevalence against suicide rates suggests that there are more than 400 unnecessary Canadian suicides annually, of persons with central nervous system dysfunction that is caused or exacerbated by sensitivities who have been ploughed under by abusive attitudes encouraged by the CPA.

CPSO complaints officer at first equivocates on the reality of the health complaint. Then her expression of an opinion is disowned by CPSO. In an atmosphere of widespread lethal abuse, the CPSO insisted that we make complaints about specific physicians, creating an adversarial situation that might unfairly reflect on one physician. The CPSO refused (and refuses) to act on the general problem, despite the fact that it contributes to perhaps 2,000 unnecessary deaths in Ontario health care annually, despite 300 years of supportive literature, generations of consumer and clinical experience, despite their obligations under the Ontario Human Rights Code.

Article outlines some of the concerns about learning and behavioural sequelea of sensitivities, health concerns in classroom, need to accommodate children with these disabilities through environmental changes.

In 2010, CPSO has still not protected the public, guided the profession, concerning the ongoing unnecessary killing of persons with sensitivities by physicians.

Marleau abandoned the protection of persons with sensitivities from preventable harm in health care. More than 90,000 Canadians with sensitivities have been unnecessarily killed in health care since.

George Thomson is a good example of someone who is so committed to "taking the high road" that he is willing, even when he has mandated responsibilities, to overlook ongoing serious, even criminal, abuse.

Supportive article about chemically induced sensitivities in Gulf war vets. Ignores history, treats clinical ecologists as discovers of these age old problems.

Forwards some social and health concerns of persons with sensitivities, asks for help in ending abuse by physicians.

Outlines some of the myths, provides corrections.

Ms Grier, whose commitment to people cannot be questioned, was nonetheless not able to differentiate between the legitimate but separate debate about environmental medicine and the actual history, rights and needs of persons with sensitivities.