MCS, Toxic Mold, Sick Building Syndrome, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome by Thomas Leo Ogren

MCS, Toxic Mold, Sick Building Syndrome, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Thomas Ogren

Often people who suffer from undiagnosed illnesses may be experiencing multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), unusual pollen or mold reactions, food allergies, fibromyalgia, or even combinations of one or more of these.

Last spring I gave a talk to a group of allergists from San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties (California). I mentioned that I liked to see allergists hire college horticulture students to map the exact species of plants growing in a patient’s yard. Sometimes, as I explained, without knowledge of exactly what is growing closest to them, it is next to impossible to figure out the problem.

One of the allergists then told me this true story: They had a patient, a woman in her 60’s, from Santa Barbara, who was extremely sick and getting sicker by the day. She was having classic symptoms of both allergy and asthma, was not responding to any type of treatment, and they were afraid that she would die. And so they took the unusual step of sending someone from their office out to her house to look it all over.

The allergist’s assistant didn’t find any high allergy plants in her yards. He didn’t find any strange houseplants in her house, nor any unreported pets or anything of the sort. He saw no walls, windows, bathrooms or anything that appeared to pose a mold problem. The house was an older one, and he doubted that it was off-gassing chemicals. He was about to give up when he noticed a door he hadn’t seen before. “Where does that go?” he asked her.

“To my basement,” she told him.

Now, because basements are rare in California, he was surprised to discover this. When he opened the door, turned on the lights and walked down the steps he was even more surprised. There, growing all over the cement floor of her basement were thousands of unusual looking mushrooms. When he asked her why they were there, she told him, “Well, they just started to grow there and I let them grow since they were so pretty.”

I’m sure you can figure out the rest of the story. He took samples of the mushrooms back to the office and the woman was tested for spores from these same fungi and it turned out that her entire system was swamped with these allergenic, poisonous mushroom spores. The mushrooms were of some rare species native to the southeastern US and no one ever did figure out how their spores had arrived in that lady’s basement and started growing.

The mushrooms were removed, the basement was cleaned up and the patient regained her health.

Another interesting episode of trigger sleuthing: A woman from Lompoc, California asked me to look over the yard of her apartment to see if I could figure out what was making her so sick. She was in her late 30’s, married, had always enjoyed excellent health, but was getting sicker and sicker. She was starting to forget things, had headaches, sore throats, was always tired, often had stuffed up sinuses, and now and then would slur her words while she was talking. More and more she would forget what she was saying right in mid-sentence.

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BIO:

Thomas Ogren is the author of Allergy-Free Gardening. Tom does consulting work on landscaping for the USDA, county asthma coalitions, www.Allegra.com, and the Canadian and American Lung Associations. He has appeared on HGTV and The Discovery Channel. His book, Safe Sex in the Garden, was published in 2003. In 2004 Time Warner Books published his latest book: What the Experts May NOT Tell You About: Growing the Perfect Lawn. His website: www.allergyfree-gardening.com

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