Diary: TOXIC AMERICA: SCENTED CANDLES, PLUG-INS, PERFUMES, AND OFFSHORE PLASTICS

Many years ago, a cousin of mine made huge fusses over anyone wearing perfume, smoking, or wearing too much hair spray in her home. Came to the point where she stopped inviting such people over to her frequent parties. She said those things gave her headaches and asthma. I thought she was a fuss-budget. (What has budget to do with fussing? In fact, what does the term/phrase mean, really?) I was mildly suspicious of her claims, because she sends out to have her bras blocked, and she often spreads chive and shallots in butter sauce, on her head when going to mass, (but not if she is taking communion, "It runs down my nose and I don't like wafers in butter sauce with shallots and chive!")

In the mid 1980's I noticed that certain laundry detergents and those little, flat pieces of cloth or paper that you put in your dryer, fabric softener, made one smell like a $3.00 bordello, so I stopped using the $3.00 bordello strips and searched in vain for non-scented detergent, or one that smelled more like one of the classier bordello's I've heard so much about. (Not that I've ever been in a $3.00 bordello, or any bordello.) I finally stumbled onto grocers called Fresh Fields, which was bought out by Whole Foods, which unscented everything, including fruit and vegetables! (Just kidding about the produce.)

As the years ticked by, I began to notice that anytime I entered certain people's homes, especially their bedrooms or laundry rooms, I would get asthma, shortness of breath, headachy (people love to give tours of their new homes, even without being asked, I never could see the purpose of that, because once when this woman was giving us the bathroom tour, we found her husband showering with an ocelot).

I never, ever got headaches before, except once when I caught a pass and ran into a wood fence surrounding our football field-knocked down, flat-out cold for a few seconds. Aside from sizing up fields from then on especially the locations of fences and other obstructions, I began to size up people's homes, mostly those of the females with which I would often spend the night, which was a hobby of mine for a time, no sex, just spending the night, mostly playing monopoly (Just kidding). The home's which dealt-out headaches and shortness of breath, had a few things in common; scented candles, plug-ins, and fabric softeners. Some had all of those things and more.

No longer would the thought of bathrooms with Jacuzzis lit by dozens of different size candles, send lightening bolts in to my erogenous zones, nor would water beds with silken sheets, washed in raspberry scent and dried in $3.00 bordello scent. The sheets and other things dried with the fabric softener also gave me a crawly, itchy feeling as though large spiders or toads were creeping along up and down my chest, legs and back. Recent tests on children's clothing showed that fabric softeners are an incredible fire accelerant, up to 30 times that of clothes which used no fabric softener

Another cousin of mine bought a new computer and when she opened the carton in which the printer was packed, before she even set it up, she got a massive headache, sore throat, and burning eyes as it exuded an odor straight from Hell. It smelled like Chinese, plastic death. She put it in the garage to outgas, unlike people, it never did. (Party-tip, I have frequently placed people-friends, at parties, in the garage to outgas, and that usually works.)

I bought some poker chips, made also in China; they smelled much like the printer, some of the chips, in fact, were the same colors as the printer. I called them, leftover plastic, offspring of printer, Chinese, death, chips.

Since the weather was warming (It was March) I sometimes left the garage door open, so, I put the chips in the garage to outgas with a few friends, left over from a New years Eve party, but still out-gassing. Six months later, they smelled like the offspring of the printer, (the chips not my friends) so, I added, as in the German language, a string of impressionist words; Chinese, toxic, plastic, death, sons-of-a-printer, poker chips, and friends.

A bit later I bought a board game with plastic parts, five minutes after opening them, they were banished off to the garage. The chips were still there, out-gassing, still, but my friends from News Years Eve, were not. I wondered how they'd gotten home, hadn't heard from them since until last week... wanted to know when my next New Year's Eve Party was going to be, and what could they bring, and where did I get those great cigarettes, so pungent? I said, "they were not cigarettes, they were pieces of hemp I'd cut from a rope, to make a toy for a relative's son. I never saw them again, (the party-out-gasser's not my cousin and her son, hemp I hear will get you higher than the Hancock Building.)

Last Labor Day, one of the guys I played baseball with, Ray (he batted 2nd in front of me,) bought a huge, plush, wood carved, leather, desk chair to impress clients and a girlfriend, (paid about two-grand for it) asked me to stop by on Saturday for a game of fast-pitch with some of our old teammates. After the double header, Ray, who was worn out from running the bases and chasing ground balls and pop ups constantly, wanted drown himself in beer, we had two kegs and a keg of on tap root beer.

Ray's girlfriend, who works for PLAYBOY in Chicago had a group her model friends over to serve beer, meatball and sausage sandwiches and Pizza (all home made, including the bread, sent over by my dearest loveliest aunt, still beautiful in her 70's) and before long we were all lounging around, falling down, laughing and playing soft football with the girls (Tackle, yes!) who had brought some PLAYBOY cotton footballs stuffed with foam rubber), when Ray started to tell us about the chair. We went over to look at it, actually, rather to smell it. It smelled like the latest toxic leather gloves one buys nowadays and stuffs into a plastic bag and throws in the tool shed-too expensive to throw away, to worn from scrubbing with saddle soap to get the odor out of, but never can, to return.

I helped him put the chair in the garage until he could call the store, to return it for one with a cloth upholstery, while there, those friends which we'd put in my garage, from the New Year's Eve Party, were back and curled up in a corner. I looked at them, and Ray, shrugging his shoulders, said, "my 4th of July party, you were in Italy?" That triggered a conversation with the guys and girls about toxic odors. Most of the thiings which were too toxic to contend with, were from China, some from Mexico and other offshore manufacturers. I had been writing Federal agencies for more than a decade insisting that many scented candles and plug-ins contained carcinogenic chemicals, as well as vaso-constrictors, (which narrow arteries) but only recently was that verified in an email from a NYTimes article, which I receive online to avoid the formaldehyde from the newspapers, (I often wondered if the Congressman Henry Hyde, RTD. from my district, ever had a sister named Formalda...(Hyde).

Finally, we asked the question of each other, who are the people who own all this toxic offshore stuff and how do they live with the smell? Well, we put it all together in that afternoon. Those who voted for GW Bush?

Most of those we knew who were addicted to fragrances were female, and having surrounded themselves with everything scented with toxic fragrances, had virtually deadened or over sensitized their olfactory systems, and thereby lost their sense of smell from constant inundatution of hair sprays, deodorants, plug-ins, Wipes, and those Christmas trees hanging in cars, to kill the odor of their other carcinogenic habit, cigarettes. Add that to the bathroom sprays, soaps, shampoos, detergents, plastics, leathers, fabric softeners, and a jillion other toxic smelling products and you have a very sick house, to say nothing of those who reside in it.

Most of those who suffer from fragrance addiction, not only cannot figure out why they have constant headaches, but if you tell them, they say, "But I like them!" They voted for Bush and probably own a Land Rover, which they can neither steer properly, nor park, nor keep out of the hands of the Mechanics. The men who are numb to the odors are those who virtually douse themselves or shower in fragrances,. Now plastic cell phones, whew! They are the worst, mine is metal and old but I won't trade it in on a plastic, Chinese, toxic, death, fumes emission, cell phone, and when they can no longer update mine, I will go without.

Well, they no longer make fragrances from natural ambergris, (acres of whale vomit, but good for non-toxic fragrances) from which the great perfumes have been made for hundreds of years because either there are too few whales or the few that there are have learned to take bicarbonate of soda after a heavy meal.

Well maybe now people can learn to do one of two things, chuck the carcinogenic fragrances or live with the headaches and the fatal results, As for my gal and I, we have found that literally everything you don't buy at Whole Foods, or some of their copy-cat stores, is toxic.

These products and many more unnamed here, have several things in common; they are toxic, or carcinogenic, or allergenic, or both, dangerous, many are made of petroleum byproducts and are products outsourced, offshore and the people who buy them have no clue as to the dangers. Many contain a form of Benzene, and Napthalene, as well as the vaso-constrictors. What is most frightening, is that many doctors, including allergists, don't have a clue either, even after examining someone suffering from such products, the doctors often compound their patient's injury (not illness, injury, take note class-action lawsuit attorney's) by prescribing drugs which only serve to complicate the problems and are also often made of petroleum by products.)

Well, it begins to make my Income Status Card for my HEALTHY/WEALTHY AMERICA PLAN, package look even better, dump the offshore toxic garbage, chuck all plastics, and all fragrances and let's see, ummm, oh, yeah, tax the Hell out of the outsourcer's, to finance the HEALTHY/WEALTHY AMERICA PLAN hey, and maybe tax the out-gassers as well, otherwise your garage will be so crowded there won't be any room for your auto's.

See: Comprehensive Health Care Plan-URL Below:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_professo_070201_a_comprehensive_heal.htm