QEW aims for fragrance-free meetings

This year QEW is asking those attending its fall Annual Meeting to come as "fragrance-free" as possible. It is hoped this practice will make attendance easier for those with severe chemical sensitivities.

Being fragrance-free begins with avoiding scented personal products like perfumes, soaps, shampoos, lotions, or deodorants. But it also means not wearing clothes that have been washed with scented fabric softeners or detergents. This could be quite an undertaking, as it is sometimes hard to find unscented versions of many products. They can be found in natural food stores and in supermarkets such as Whole Earth and Wild Oats. You can also buy them on the Web. Do a search on "fragrance-free products," or go to <www.peggymunson.com.mcs/products.html>.

It's neither possible nor desirable to monitor what everyone does at QEW events, so we'll be relying mainly on feedback:

What was it like to receive this request? How easy or hard was it to find fragrance-free replacements for the products you normally use? And most important: Did having the meeting try to go fragrance-free make it possible, or easier, for you to attend because of your chemical sensitivities?

Chemicals are all around us these days, and they accumulate in our bodies in measurable amounts. In some cases the effects on our health are known, but many substances, including thousands of synthetics on the market, remain untested. Little research is done on the combined effects of these chemicals once they are inside us. We do know that an increasing number of us get sick from them, and that reactions can be life-threatening.

A particular offender is "musk ambrette," a synthetic musk shown in 1984 to cause central and peripheral nervous system damage, leading the Fragrance Materials Association of the U.S. to recommend limiting its use. In spite of this, use of musk ambrette increased six-fold between 1979 and 1988.

Most often a chemical sensitivity will be initiated by strong exposure to something in particular, and the body responds by getting ill. Once the body's systems have been activated, next time the response can be quicker, stronger, and triggered by even less of an exposure. It can also be triggered by anything chemically similar to the first. Soon chemicals that the body has been handling successfully for years may bring on illness, as the sensitivity spreads in a "cascade effect." That is what happened to Alicia Adams, a QEW supporter living in New Mexico who was initially poisoned by massive pesticide exposure while working in community development in Venezuela. Her husband died 4 years later from that poisoning. [See the November-December 2004 issue of BeFriending Creation.]

There would be much less suffering from chemical sensitivity if policies about putting new products on the shelves were based on the Precautionary Principle: A new product would have to be judged harmless before it could be sold to the public. Under current policy, a product must be proved to be associated with a certain amount of damage to health, usually through lengthy and expensive court trials, in order to have it removed from circulation.

By encouraging us to go fragrance-free, QEW is giving us the opportunity to consider how much we want to participate in practices that poison the environment and threaten everyone's health. It is giving us a preview of what it would take to untangle ourselves from this web we didn't choose to spin.

—Mary Gilbert QEW Sustainability:
Faith & Action Interest Group

Chemical pollution may affect fetus development

According to an article in the April 1, 2007 Seattle Times, fisheries biologists have been finding male fish that have become "feminized," possibly as the result of exposure to human hormones and hormone-mimicking chemicals flushed into rivers and oceans from sewage treatment plants, septic systems, factories, and non-point sources. Such chemicals are found in a variety of consumer products, including birth control pills, plastic bottles, detergent, and makeup. They are now more dispersed in the environment than previously known.

Scientists also have been studying a recent trend for female fish in areas subject to chemical contamination to reach sexual maturity at earlier ages and to spawn later than normal.

Levels of hormones and hormone-like substances in most bodies of water are not thought to be high enough to affect swimmers. But there is concern that low levels of endocrine disruptors in the environment could affect developing human fetuses during phases of development that are coordinated by natural sex hormones, the article reported.

New QEW pamphlet!

This new pamphlet was included in the QEW annual appeal letter going out in November. It includes practical, professional guidance for those wanting more time and space for Earthcare and soul care. Extra copies may be ordered from the QEW office.