You know Janice, I have a similar story where in l976 I worked in a Media
Centre at a local college with printing presses.  Every night we had to
clean the machines with Methanol (right spelling?) to remove the ink.  When
I got home when and if I had a nap I would wake up and found that I could
barely breathe.  Because I smoked, I blamed it on the smoke but perhaps it
was the fumes from the solution.  Any comments?  Fleurette 58/2




At 01:07 PM 3/18/97 -0500, you wrote:
>------------------------
>
>I would appreciate anyone's comments regarding any correlation between
>persons having PD and also having an extremely sensitive reaction of their
>nervous system when exposed to certain chemicals, pesticides, and herbi-
>sides.
>
>Last weekend I was in our Barnes & Noble bookstore browsing through their
>Bargain Books (all hardcover books, if that matters).  Within minutes I
>was aware of a very strong "chemical" smell in the air and apparently
>eminating from the thousands of books.  My lungs and throat felt very
>strange and I thought I might pass out so I left the building and went
>home.  For the next several hours I felt weak and had difficulty breath-
>ing and I trembled all over.  The chemical smell of the bookstore stayed
>with me for two days.  My husband, who was with me, had no reaction;
>indeed, he was not even aware of the chemical.
>
>I have had several similar reactions in the past when I was in a closed-up
>house and a Mosquito Control truck went by, spraying insecticide at our
>lawns and which immediately seeped into the house.  No one else in the
>house could detect it but to me it was over-powering.  I reacted the same
>as described above.  The same thing occurred when a "duster" airplane
>kept swooping over our apartment complex which was next to farmland,
>spraying the crops with, I later found out, a herbicide.
>
>I have always had the theory that my young-age-onset PD (33) was caused by
>my concentrated exposure to DDT as a baby living in a bug-infested
>southern state.  (Our small house we rented had been dowsed with the
>insecticide by the owner - this was in 1944.)
>
>What I am wondering is could my extreme sensitivity to the chemicals,
>herbicides, and pesticides as described above be an indication that my
>body cannot absorb the toxicity of these chemicals the way most other
>people can?  If this is so, wouldn't it help substantiate my theory of the
>cause of my YAOPD, and shouldn't the medical researchers be concentrating
>on TOXINS as being the cause of this horrific affliction?
>___________________________
>
>Janice Long (54/20 yrs.)
>