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QUESTION:In July of last year Rick and I thought our cats had found a patch of raw
fiberglass insulation and had carried it to our bed. It felt like fiberglass
and yes, we did find insulation they could have gotten to...a small piece which
we threw out. End of problem...we thought.
It took a couple of weeks to figure that insulation wasn't our problem. It had
been a mild summer and we hadn't had the central air on hardly at all. So it
wasn't till the first real nippy day in September that we realized our problem
was back! No, no insulation around...what could it be? Rick checked out the
furnace and saw that some of its inner insulation was crumbling away....Ah Ha!
No ah ha...after two different furnace repair men did an inspection. (The first
tried to tell us we HAD to buy a new furnace...the second clued us in on the
firsts rep about town. We talked to a few people and found out Number One told
everyone they had to buy a new furnace!) So we had the honest man really go
over ducts and furnace and he pointed out that it wasn't coming from the furnace
but the furnace WAS blowing it throughout the house.
What was it? Dust...a fine, talc-like dust. As time went on and the dust came
in I began to get sick on it. I couldn't breathe, I had a permanent frog in my
throat no amount of hawking would move, I could feel it in my eyes at night and
it coated our lips, tasting bitter every time we licked them. And it was
getting worse! Rick wasn't as effected as I was and we thought it might be
because he was out of the dust for eight hours a day, breathing uncontaminated
air. My daughter, with her basement apartment, never had dust coming into her
area at all...probably because there was only one heat duct down there. It
doesn't blow hard down there.
Then two things came to mind. Our beautiful, lush yard, crammed with ground
cover and flowers, has started dying off in August. We didn't have a clue
why...then. And that summer had been unnaturally quiet. The frogs and crickets
who had made for noisy neighbors from the wetlands down the road were gone. Not
a croak or a peep had we heard all summer when the summer before we'd joked
about grenading the pond for some quiet! Where had the frogs and crickets gone?
What was killing our ground cover?
Dust. A fine talc-like dust...on every leaf, on the groundcover, killing its
ability to use sunshine. Killing plants.
I contacted the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and they sent an
inspector out. She could see the dust on the leaves outside...she could see how
clogged a furnace filter got after a week in our furnace. She was appalled,
pointing out that the frogs and crickets would have left as the ground cover
began dying. (I'd feared the dust itself had killed them, boding not well for
me!)
The inspector took our furnace filter and she took leaf samples from the yard,
saying she could see the dust laying on the leaves. She cautioned us that it
could take years before we could get the offending factory to quit
polluting...IF we could pinpoint which local factory was doing it! It would be
at least a month before we heard from the government's lab.
So we waited...and spent more money on an air filter...two air filters...four
expensive heppa air filters. We sealed all the windows with clear plastic. We
resealed them when my daughter's cats used their claws on them. We bought a
very expensive vacuum to make sure we were getting up as much dust as possible.
And the dust still rained in, sometimes pattering on our faces before we got
smart and rigged up a canapy to keep it off as we slept. And I got sicker.
If I stayed downstairs too long I'd pay a price. If I wore the breathing masks
we bought I was alright till I took it off, then I'd hack and wheeze till
aclimated somewhat. (The dust was heavest on the main floor.)
If I breathed a bit without a mask, which had to happen if I were going to eat
dinner with the family, I'd have nose bleeds. Me, who'd never had a nose bleed
in her life, now got them regularly.
And then the lab report finally came back. I'd pinned all my hopes on this
report, sure it would point a finger at the factory who had been making my life
hell. I'd demand they stop polluting. I'd force them to pay to have our home
dedusted. I'd make them sorry!
No, I wouldn't...because the governments crack lab said the dust on the filter
was that...household dust. Somehow the dust coated leaves had been
mishandled...they were just leaves! I cried. No one to make stop...and the
damned dust keeps coming in!
In desperation we made a hard decision; we'd dedust our bedroom entirely,
getting rid of anything we could so as to have no dust catchers around. We
packed up all our candles and candle holders. We stored our ongoing collection
of wooden whimsical animals. We took down pictures, vases, mirrors...anything
that could go went. And then we vacuumed, from the fan down, we vacuumed
everything! After four hours and SEVEN CUPS of dust we had a room where I could
breathe free.
And that's where I've spent the last six months for most of every day. At four
I go downstairs, don my breathing mask which sort of works, and start my dinner
as I clean the kitchen and surrounding areas. I don't tarry downstairs
anymore...I can't. I keep my mask at hand and take a bite, chew and breathe
under the mask, take a bite....
My doctor was sure I was allergic to the dust and all we'd have to do is figure
out what it contained so I could be treated. But the evidence shows that I am
not allergic....it's the dust itself that's a hazard to health. The two times
Rick had extended periods off work he too soon sickened from breathing the dust
24-7. So that shot the theory that I might be allergic. The neighbors next
door who had the same problem when they moved in four years ago shot the theory
that I might be a hypochondriac. They too had gone through the government lab
testing and they too had been told it was just dust. A dust that had caused
them to suffer through TWELVE bouts of pneumonia in a year! Could that be why I
had four bouts of bronchitis last winter?
Where is the dust coming from? We don't know. Why did the government lab say
this dust was just common dust when it's made five people sicken? We don't
know. Why didn't the government's inspector tell us this was a problem for
others in the neighborhood? We don't know. It does make us think........
So here we are now, nowhere near an answer. We've since sent a sample of the
dust on to an independent chemist but still have no word as to what we're
breathing. I am being treated with nasal steroids and decongestants to help my
respiration. I can no longer stand to be downstairs even with the breathing
masks...the dust is too pervasively thick on the main level. The computer has
to stay on that level for my daughter to do her schoolwork so I'm reduced to
grabbing mail, quick scanning the website and sometimes posting a quick welcome to
newbies. The dust is so fine and easily lifted by the merest puff of air it
will take a long time for us to get it out of the house once we've gotten it
stopped at the source.
ANSWER: You said you'd spoken to the neighbours - have you tried widening your
search to the neighbourhood? And are there any army or defence
research establishments near you? I just don't buy that - I wonder what your independent test will show.
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