You're invited to MCS Awareness Month 2010

Lourdes Salvador from the organization MCS America invites all to the event "Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Awareness Month - Because Everyone is At Risk!". It will start on 1st may 2010 at 00.00 and it will end on 31st may 2010 at 11.55 p.m.

Lourdes says: "I have just created a Facebook page for MCS America. Fans of MCS America will see posted links, events, and news content on their homepage.Please become a 'fan' and let everyone else who may be interested know about the page.".

See more details on FaceBook or on MCS America.

You can organize events in your own country to inform the general public and to ask for politic actions in favour of MCS people and for the prevention of Toxic Injuries.

To learn how to promote MCS awareness or download our Event Planning Kit.http://mcs-america.org/MCSAwarenessMonthEventPlanningKit.

View Awareness Month Governor Proclamations http://www.mcs-america.org/index_files/proclamations.htm

The Naked Truth about MCS

We are born naked, they give us cologne, perfumed nappies, clothes washed with softeners, creams with all kinds of possible aromas, and they drive us in plastic stroller while we breathe nice polluted air.
We grow up and they make us believe that we can achieve anything we want, that we can write our future, that the happiness is based in buy everything and the state is here to protect and watch over us, although I had my doubts.

One day, you wake up and nothing has sense. You switch on the table lamp and your eyes get burnt; you open the window and perceive new smells that don’t let you breathe. You turn on the radio and the music booms in your head, so much that you fear it will explode. And you don’t have a hangover. It’s worse. It’s been called Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) and has come to stay. Your body has said ‘enough’, has been broken and starts rejecting everything that they told you was essential for your happiness. Your life has taken an unexpected turn, your mind changes, your future vanishes, you don’t have physical nor mental energy. The disease forces you to live your life behind a mask and have been in isolation from the outside world.

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity is not strange, nor a minority. It affects to the 5% of the population. It’s a chronic disease, not psychological, which causes symptoms as a response to a minimal exposure to usual and unnecessary chemical products like bleach, air fresheners, perfumes, etc. We live locked in our houses but it’s not necessary to go out to have a crisis. Your neighbour’s cloths airing outside suffocate you, make you feel sick until you loose consciousness, thanks to the wonderful toxic softeners.
The World Health Organization (WHO) don’t recognize MCS as a disease yet, in spite of having in their possession innumerable studies that prove its existence and the European Parliament includes it inside the growing number of diseases related to environmental factors. The reason is the pressure that the chemical and pharmaceutical industry exerts for not recognize it, because MCS is caused by the chemical products that we use to consume. The economical interests in front of our health. In countries which this problem is recognized, like Germany, medical assistance and financial aids towards it are provided, and in some other countries it is being considered at the moment.

And what’s the situation in Spain? We don’t exist to our paternal government. On top of the drama of suffering MCS, they abandon us, without medical assistance and without any right to a disability benefit when we can’t work. They leave us naked and unprotected, like second class citizens, because we’re the evidence that the current model of society has failed, although nobody wants to see it or to take measures to sort it out.

They too steal any hopes we might have of feeling better. Pharmacists finance research only when they can obtain any profit. As a result of this, minority diseases don’t get research, not even MCS, which affect to the 5% of the population. The chemical and pharmaceutical industry knows that we get sick because we’re intoxicated and the key is not any medicine that will make them rich. The key is to change the model of this society, decreasing the big quantity of chemical products to which we’re exposed each day. Obviously, this can’t be known and they try to deny that MCS exists, because their economical interests would be at stake.

The chemical industry, supported by the government, doesn’t have the right to subjugate the population to the involuntary exposure to chemical substances, whose effects are often unknown. When we develop MCS, we must throw away perfumes, softeners, plastics, etc., to be naked again. We born again, but it’s a new life that we don’t choose. We know by the researches that have been done that MCS has genetic components, so not anybody could develop it, although this doesn’t save you to accumulate toxics until you have a cancer or any other disease related to environmental factors.

Those who suffer MCS want the disease to be recognized; we want to have the same rights as the other chronically ill people; we want society to know the risk they are under; we want the government to protect its citizens and prevent them from getting sick at no cost for them.

We don’t want anybody feeling naked again as a result of suffering MCS.

Link to magazine Delirio Nº 3. Desnudo.
English translation from the Canary Report
Link Eva’s blog NO FUN.

Sign the Petition for an Italian Law for MCS

The Petition is sponsored by the Association for the Chronic Diseases of intoxication and / or Environmental (AMICA)
www.sensibilitachimica.it and it is aimed at pushing the discussion of the five projects of laws for the recognition of MCS as a social disease.

To President of the Senate of the Italian Republic
To the President of the Chamber of Deputies
To the XII Commission for Social Affairs of the Chamber of Deputies
To the XII Commission for Hygiene and Health of the Senate

Since Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) is a chronic debilitating disease that leads to multiorgan reactions after the exposure to various chemicals in small traces usually tolerated by the general population (the diagnostic criteria were established by an International Consensus in 1999);

Since 2-10% of the population appears to be hyper-sensitive to chemicals in the environment and in everyday life products and since a growing percentage of people suffers from the exposure to multiple substances - this is really Multiple Chemical Sensitivity or MCS - with a disability in the capacity of working, of having a social life and of autonomy, which varies from mild to very severe digree depending on the stage of the disease;

Since the MCS is recognized by the U.S. Federal Law for the Disabled American with Disabilities Act, the federal agencies - such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development, the Social Security Administration - and many local governments;

Since the MCS is recognized by agencies of the Federal and Provincial Government of Canada;

Since the MCS is classified by Germany since 1998, the International Code of Diseases with code T 78.4 in Chapter 19 (Injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes) and in Section T66-T78 (Other and not explained damage by external factors);

Given that the Ministry of Welfare and Labor German, which had already classified MCS as a motor disability (it is compared to this for the inability of patients to move freely), has now removed the description of the disease as a psychosomatic one (of psychological origin / psychiatric), putting an end to discrimination of the environmental diseases;

Given that the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan, who had already recognized for years the Sick of Building Syndrome (similar to the MCS), announced that MCS will enter the list of diseases covered by the National Health Service in oct 2009;

Since in Italy there is no law that treats the rights of environmental illnesses (not only MCS, but also of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Elettrosensibilità of Fibromyalgia, Sick of Building Syndrome, etc..), just like any other kind of disability in terms of employment protection, right to treatments, right to a "safe" house, etc..;

The petitioners ask that the six legislative proposals of parliamentarians of the House (No. 1621 August 5 2008, No. 1654 of 18 September 2008, No. 1667 of 18 September 2008, N . 2287, 12 March 2009) and Senate (NS1019 of 17 September 2008, No. 1165 of 28 October 2008) for the recognition of MCS as a social disease are discusses with the highest priority and that MCS is recognized using the International Consensus of 1999 as a benchmark for the diagnosis, as it is worldwide.


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