Letters to the Editor

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients,  Jan, 2001  

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Pesticide Poisoning Inside the Home

Editor:

On November 29, 1996, our family -- Joe Crozier, wife Yvette Maiangowi, and four-year-old son James -- moved into a home in Scottsdale, Arizona that we had bought the month before. We were healthy when we moved in, but over the next few months we all became sick with many serious ailments, including respiratory and neurological problems.

At first we thought these were caused by pollens, molds or dust, so we had the carpets and air ducts cleaned, replaced the old heating and airconditioning equipment with a new air-source heat pump, installed a HEPA-type filter and UV light at the heat pump's intake (the light kills mold spores), and thoroughly cleaned the home, including disinfecting the walls and ceilings in the bedrooms and bathrooms. None of this worked; our symptoms worsened.

On May 20, 1997 Joe saw a medical doctor who specializes in environmental illness (El). He diagnosed pesticide poisoning. He said we would find many small holes in the home's slab, through which someone had sprayed pesticides that were outgassing and poisoning us. We checked underneath the carpets and found about fifty unsealed 1/4-inch holes drilled through the concrete foundation, mostly in the master bedroom and James' bedroom.

During the next few weeks we removed the carpets, scrubbed down the floor, and started sealing the holes with premixed concrete. While doing this, our symptoms became so severe that on June 15, 1997 we were forced to evacuate the home. We never moved back.

Clinical evaluation and laboratory tests showed that chemicals had damaged our immune systems. We all had abnormally high blood levels of xylene, a neurotoxic solvent frequently used as an "inert" ingredient in pesticides. An environmental engineer found airborne Dursban, a neurotoxic pesticide. She also measured soil concentrations of Dursban, in two places near the bedrooms, 2.5 and 8.5 times the Arizona Administrative Code limits.

Arizona Structural Pest Control Commission records showed that on nine occasions from March 3, 1993 to November 2, 1995, a pesticide company hired by the previous owner sprayed more than 758 gallons of five different pesticides -- in the attic, in the walls, and under the foundation. This included 370 gallons of Dursban TC (termiticide concentrate). The previous owner's wife died in the home in March 1995.

Our doctor put us on a chemical detoxification program using nutritional supplements. On his recommendation we switched to organic foods to minimize further poisoning by pesticides. We tested allergic to numerous foods and inhalants, and started immunotherapy. We can only tolerate low-toxicity cleaning products in the apartment where we're living at present, and must operate air purifiers continually in the apartment and in Joe's car to stay symptom-free.

Despite all this, we're still not healthy. We've all developed sensitivities to many substances that never bothered us before, including perfume, conventional cleaning products, swimming-pool chlorine, phenol, formaldehyde, and the pesticides in widespread use throughout the Phoenix area. Our respiratory and neurological symptoms recur if we stray too much from our rotation-elimination diets. Progress has been slowest for James. Last year we were forced to conclude that his immune system was damaged so badly that he could never adapt well enough to the highly toxic Phoenix environment to recover. Yvette took him back to Canada in July 1999. His symptoms are somewhat reduced there, but he will need years of medical treatment and strict control of his living environment before he recovers fully, if ever.

No government agency -- federal, county, municipal -- has helped us. They all say they have no authority or jurisdiction in these matters. This situation has cost us many tens of thousands of dollars. Prolonged acute pesticide poisoning is associated with many long-term health problems, and the cost of coping with these is much higher still. In October 1998 a real estate appraiser told us the home is uninhabitable, worthless. Our savings ran out three months ago -- we're now bankrupt. And each month without medical treatment increases the probability that our immune system damage will be permanent.

Conclusions and Questions

The realtor committed a material breach of the purchase/sale contract. He failed to disclose to us that the home was so badly contaminated by pesticides that it was uninhabitable.

The pest control company committed the tort of negligence by spraying the home top-to-bottom with more than 758 gallons of highly neurotoxic chemicals, and failing to take prudent and reasonable precautions to prevent these poisons from contaminating the home's living spaces.

Because the aforementioned refused to take responsibility for injuring us, our family's health is devastated, our finances destroyed, our future opportunities and prospects grimly diminished, and our life together as a family disrupted beyond recognition.