Rebuilding a Life

by Gar Smith

Debra Lynn Dadd may look like the picture of health, but the truth is you could knock her over with a feather. Or a polyester coat. Or a whiff of perfume.

Debra Dadd is one of 35 million Americans suffering from allergic reactions. The affliction is nothing to sneeze at: last year 6,000 Americans died from allergic shock. Dadd, a 27-year old San Franciscan, has ISD„Immune System Dysregulation„she is chronically sensitive to many chemicals in the environment.

"I've been 'sick' my whole life," Dadd reminisced recently in the downtown medical high-rise office she now shares with Dr. Alan Levin, a widely published medical immunologist. "Sometimes I'd be too weak to get out of bed, but the doctors would always tell me they couldn't find anything wrong." Dadd's life was a treadmill of miseries„inexplicable fatigue, fevers, dizziness, headaches, and mental disorientation left her feeling depressed and frightened. "One of the worst things," Dadd remembers, was when her mind would short-circuit. "One second I'd be talking, I could think: the next second I wouldn't know where I was."

Finally, after one extremely serious reaction, Dadd was correctly diagnosed as having an acute sensitivity to "immunotoxic chemicals"„her immune system could be overwhelmed by exposure to petrochemical hydrocarbons, sulfur and ammonia compounds, halogens (chlorine, fluorine), and a host of chemical by-products. In short, Dadd was diagnosed as one of a growing number of people who have become "allergic to the Twentieth Century."

The hazards of exposure to immunotoxic chemicals are not limited to spills from toxic waste dumps. Many of these chemicals saturate the products stored in most American homes.

"Most commercial cleaning products contain toxic chemicals which are not required by law to be listed on the label," Dadd discovered. "Synthetically derived scents in detergents are among the worst. They don't go and squeeze these cleaners out of a rose, you know."

Polyester clothing is another danger. Like a wax candle in hot sunlight, polyester fibers are continually "outgassing"--releasing fumes. Dadd cites a National Aeronautics and Space Administration study that found polyester is more volatile than polyethylene, polyvinyl, or even polyurethane.

"All plastic containers give off volatile fumes," Dadd found, "even the plastics we wrap our food in. Food is like a sponge. What fumes don't wind up in the food go into the air." Consequently, Dadd has ditched her Saran Wrap and Baggies and opted for cellophane. "It still contains some chemicals and it's not entirely natural," she shrugs, "but it's much better than plastic."

Dadd discovered that she is particularly reactive to perfume. It was perfume that caused those mental short-circuits. "Perfumes are filled with alcohols, phenols, and formaldehydes," she explains. "You can read 'phenol' on a perfume label and it's known to be toxic. Any time people start splashing on perfume they're just dousing themselves with a toxic chemical."

Acute sensitivities to environmental chemicals can mean chronic disruptions in people's lives. Some victims of ISD must literally flee the cities for their very lives„forsaking homes, friends, and jobs in search of clean water and air. What makes Dadd's story interesting is that she chose to stay and fight. It wasn't easy.

A severely disabling attack had driven her from San Francisco to the refuge of a rural seaside community south of the Point Reyes National Seashore. "I was so sick I couldn't even stay indoors there," Dadd recalls, "I had to sleep outside every night." Her food was restricted to pure water and a different organic fruit three times a day. She was fortunate. After six weeks of "detoxification," she regained her health„her immune system was able to recover and function normally.

She returned to San Francisco, to an apartment facing the Pacific Ocean, and removed everything that contained allergy-triggering chemicals. "I started with my bedroom. I took everything out: ripped up the rugs, tore down the curtains, got cotton sheets, bought an old bed that didn't have foam in it. I moved my books into the front room (she found she was allergic to the chemicals in the ink), got an air filter, started wearing only natural fiber clothing, and started going for long walks on the beach.

"And, for the first time in my life, I started feeling healthy," Dadd recalls enthusiastically, "I felt so good!" That's when she made the decision to get involved in the field of allergy testing and research.

But her personal battle for survival was just beginning. It was one thing to clean up an apartment but how do you clean up an entire city? Obviously, you can't. Instead, you learn to cope.

"One of the major stresses for people with this illness is not knowing what you can use to replace your life with," Dadd says feelingly. "You see, I had completely stripped away everything that was 'bad,' but I didn't have a new world to go into." For instance? "Well, the doctors told me to use only unscented shampoos. That was easier said than done."

Still reeling from chemical reactions, Dadd had no choice but to wander down the fluorescent corridors of supermarkets "sniffing" containers until I found one that wouldn't leave me feeling sick." Choking back tears, coughing, sniffling, and jotting down notes through swollen eyes, Dadd prowled the misty aisles. It was something like hunting for needles in a burning haystack.

Dadd's appreciation of the chemical boobytraps buried in common products grew. So, too, did her lists of alternative chemical-free products. "Fortunately I found there were plenty of things out there for me to live a normal life. I didn't have to be separate and different from others. I didn't have to go to live on a mountaintop and leave my friends and my life behind."

It occurred to Dadd that what she had found out was valuable enough to share. "Many ISD sufferers," she points out, "are so symptomatic they don't have the energy to go out and find products they can use." What was needed, she realized, was a guide to what she came to call "non-toxic lifestyles." With the support and assistance of Dr. Levin, she produced a book, A Consumer's Guide for the Chemically Sensitive. The self-published guide (printed using non-toxic inks, of course) was an instant bestseller in the San Francisco Bay Area, this despite the fact that it received no publicity fanfares and was priced at $17.

Dadd has become something of an authority these days„a kind of Dear Abby-cum-Bess Meyerson for the chemophobic subculture. Her book serves as a Whole Earth Catalog of unchemicalized-merchandise and foods. It took Dadd several years of hard work to research the book, and it shows.

Using the guide it is possible to identify the toxic chemicals present in common consumer products, from acetone„in drawing inks and perfumes„to Xylene„felt-tipped markers, rubber cement, show polish and acoustic tile. It may come as a surprise to learn that formaldehyde is found in such disparate items as anti-freeze, toilet paper, mouthwash, and contraceptive creams. But it's just short of stomach-churning to discover that sulfurous acid is used both to disinfect ships and preserve fruit ant wine; or that urea is employed in the manufacture of flameproofing, fertilizers, and dentifrices.

Another appendix in the guide lists food additives and cosmetic ingredients„all those strange-sounding names found in the small type at the far corner of a product label. "Carrageenan?" It comes from seaweed, it's used in both food and cosmetic products, it's "generally recognized as safe" by the Food and Drug Administration. "Bioflavanoids?" That's just Vitamin P from orange or lemon rinds. But watch out for that formic acid in your beer and the phenol in your shaving cream or "Spandex" girdles.

But it's the last part of the guide that probably accounts for the great popularity of the book. In Dadd's first edition she managed to locate more that 1,600 manufacturers, distributors, and local and mail order suppliers for non-toxic products. Included are sources for non-toxic Afghan rugs, baked goods, bedspreads, buttons, candles, contact lens fluids, dishware, furniture, glass cleaners, hair lotions, luggage, office supplies, soaps, tampons, and wood finishes. Dadd has even found sources for unchemicalized soda pop, non-toxic pens and markers, wood-and-metal telephones, organic fortune cookies, and natural fiber teddy bears.

Dadd's book is a truly revolutionary tool because it creates entirely new ways to look at the world. It reveals the prevalence of plastic-based products and chemically treated merchandise. More importantly, it shows that there is an alternative„a large and varied marketplace of small and large businesses dedicated to reducing the levels of toxic chemical exposure in everyday life.

Even with a resource like the Consumers Guide in hand, there will be moments when the chemically sensitive will run head-long into some irritant. But Dadd's solution to the dilemma of belching buses, cigarette puffers, and perfume dousers is an exemplary demonstration of her premise that you can survive and be stylish at the same time.

Dadd characteristically dresses in attractive natural fiber outfits set off by a jaunty scarf. The scarf, it turns out, is a defensive tool.

"It's my portable personal pollution protection device," Dadd grins. "You carry two yards of fine, undyed, unbleached and thoroughly washed cotton, muslin, or silk noir around you neck" and, if you get caught in an elevator with a cigar smoker or seated next to a room deodorizer, just "reach for your scarf and breath through several thicknesses of it."

The blind have their white canes. The chemically sensitive have their silk noir scarves.

Dadd's self-published guide is soon to be released nationally by J.P. Tarcher. It's been a remarkable success story by anyone's measure. Why has the book been so sought after? Dadd has an explanation.

"Everybody has the potential to react to these environmental chemicals," she points out. "People should look at what's happening to us as a warning of what might happen to them. We react to these chemicals because there's some sort of dysregulation going on in our bodies. But it's not only us. Children are affected. Older people and unborn babies are dying. Anyone who's not in tiptop physical shape is susceptible in some degree to these chemicals."

Letters to Debra Lynn Dadd

Our April issue carried an article (Rebuilding a Life") by Gar Smith about Debra Lynn Dadd, a young woman who is allergic to nearly all synthetic chemicals modern living seems to depend on: perfumes, detergents, MSG, you name it. Ms. Dadd set out to find products not containing synthetics that she could use without triggering allergic reactions. The result is a book titled A Consumer's Guide for the Chemically Sensitive.

The article provoked a remarkable response from our readers. More than 200 of you ordered the book, and many wrote letters to Ms. Dadd. Most of these letters were extremely touching, and Debra shared some of them with us. We print a few extracts below, with names omitted to preserve the privacy of the correspondents.

"Rebuilding a Life was very nearly a miracle to me. I have been living at 6,500 feet for nearly 5 1/2 years owing to critical systemic disruption from any petroleum-based product, cigarete smoke, food allergies to newarly everything except organic fruit and vegetables and some dried legumes.

I've suffered with my intolerance for my environment since my first bath after birth in the hospital, when my skin sloughed off and they swathed me in gaue and petroleum jelly. I became violently ill when my mother tried to nurse me and went into convulsions when they tried cow's milk formula.

I am 40 years old now and my immune system has burned out, or so it seems.

I just got back from a concert where several perfumed ladies sat near me. My nose promptly plugged up and halfway through the show I started itching.

Thank you very much for writing the book. My 25-year-old neice was one of the 6,000 Americans who died last year from allergic shock--wish we had known about your book sooner.

I too have ISD [immune system dysfunction] from living in an apartment insulated with formaldehyde. Since this happened I have lost my job. My employer agrees that cigarette smoke is dangerous for me, but will not ask my coworkers to stop smoking around me. Instead they asked me not to come to work anymore. I have filed state and federal discrimination complaints. The irony is that I was formerly an environmental lobbyist and have always tried to minimize my exposure to toxic substances.

I would like to inquire about paperback rights to your book.

Halfway through the current issue of Not Man Apart I sneezed (the ink, I suspect)...Fortunately I do live on a mountain top, but it's 30 miles from Manhattan. Your book sounds wonderful and I (and I know many others) will be so grateful that you have written it.

My congratulations on your achievement. I am well aware of the difficulties in accomplishing this work, having co-authored "The Food Additives Book." Your volume must have been more difficult than mine as we had the assistance of information from the labels of processsed foods to locate hazardous substances.
--Nicholas Freyberg
Chilmark, Maine

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