POISONING YOUR “DOCTOR WITHIN”: COMMON HOUSEHOLD CLEANERS ARE POTENTIALLY TOXIC

Government and industry claim that there are “safe” levels for various toxins in the body. That idea is patently absurd. Five to 40 years may pass before chemicals and particles you were exposed to at work, home or school are expressed as a disease. To be safe, I say that any amount is too much. Any risk we take of harming our “doctor within” is too great.

This much we do know: worldwide chemical pollution of our air, food, water and environment is reflected in the chemical pollution of our bodies. For example, house and industrial painters, who have worked for long periods in confined spaces and inhaled paint fumes, may suffer from a chronic brain syndrome characterized by fatigue, headaches, dizziness, depression, irritability and memory impairment. Being on guard against the obvious toxins isn’t enough. Hobbies such as sculpting, welding and painting, for instance, expose us to various toxins. Common household cleaners are potentially toxic. You may be unwittingly exposed to asbestos in school, at your workplace, even in your own home.

I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the attractive 45-year-old woman who came to me complaining of frequent colds, irritability, nervousness and forgetfulness. “And those are only the major problems,” she explained. “I also have dizziness, insomnia and sometimes pain in my stomach.”

The laboratory studies I ordered showed that her immune system was out of whack, but not in any of the usual ways. She didn’t have AIDS, EB virus, CMV or any other standard immune-system diseases.

As is my custom, I reviewed all her old medical records. There was nothing in the many documents that suggested an answer to her current problems. She worked in a defense plant, making parts for a new, top-secret bomber. Perhaps she had inhaled a chemical at the factory?

“No,” she said, “there aren’t any chemicals where I work. We have good ventilation, too, so even if there were chemicals, I wouldn’t breathe in a lot of them.”

“Well,” I continued, “what exactly do you do at work?”

“I run a big machine that stamps out metal,” she explained. “But it’s almost entirely run by computer. I don’t have to touch the machine itself, just the contol board. Except when I clean it.”

“How do you clean it?” I wanted to know. She told me that she poured fluid out of an unlabeled can onto the machine and, using her bare hands, rubbed the fluid in to get the grease off of the machine. That was the clue I needed. Suspecting there might be a toxic chemical in the cleaning fluid, I ordered a battery of toxicology tests to be run. The laboratory found large amounts of chloroform in her blood, plus trichloroacetic acid and trichloroethanol in her urine. It turned out that the cleaning fluid contained trichloroethylene, a very dangerous but widely used industrial solvent. Exposure to this chemical, along with other chemicals and their break-down products, can depress the immune system and cause mental depression and such abnormalities of the central nervous system as confusion and un-coordination. In animals, this chemical has even caused liver cancer.

Happily, when she adopted my Immune For Life program and transferred to a different part of the factory—and got away from the cleaning fluid—most of her symptoms disappeared, and her immune-system tests returned to normal. As a special precaution, I had her get rid of the cleaning fluids and other chemical concoctions in her home.

Toxic chemicals are everywhere. There’s asbestos in our buildings, mercury in the fish we eat, pesticides in our beef and potentially harmful and hormones in our chicken. The DDT that was banned long ago is still in our drinking water and meats. Processed foods are full of potentially toxic substances. The air we breathe can be toxic. Even wallpaper contains pesticides. In our society, it’s very hard to avoid toxic chemicals and environmental pollutants. That’s why we must do everything we can to protect and strengthen our “doctor within.”

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