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Building Seven

Posted by DCA Theater on September 18, 2009 in Site Unseen

© 2009 Julie Laffin

Julie Laffin, the curator of Site Unseen, spent several weeks in Dallas, TX being treated for severe environmental illness. The following article documents her experience at a safe housing complex there.

Bed, Room 713 © 2009 Julie Laffin

I never made it to Snowflake, Arizona this year, a place I love and was hoping to return to. Last year I spent two months in the desert air living among friends there and making art. This year, I spent half of July and half of August in Building Seven, a residential holding tank in Dallas, Texas for the environmentally ill. None of us could live there without several strict rules. No pesticides are used and every resident moving into Building Seven is required to sign a contract agreeing to forgo the following: smoking and pets, scented products, scented detergents in the dedicated laundry room, and any “alterations” to the suites. This last one might seem easy to the non-environmentally ill but many of us are so sensitive we have to foil surfaces, cover them up to make them neutral and seal up every window to create a barrier to some of the things that ail us (and there are plenty in Dallas in the height of summer).

My suite was on the first floor and though I longed for an upper floor unit with tiled walls and floors, 713 was the most neutral for me chemically speaking.  As all the units did, mine came with organic cotton sheets, organic mattress (sans the flame retardants required by law except with a doctor’s order), metal and solid wood furnishings, filtered drinking and shower water, a state of the art HVAC system and free transportation to and from the clinic I was being treated at. Because I was sick for the duration of my stay there, I came to see Building Seven as a kind of dolled up, private hospital room but without the benefit or intrusion of medical personnel.

Bathroom at Night © 2009 Julie Laffin

I arrived at Building Seven by making an emergency landing there after first attempting to stay at Ecology Housing, a community of small ramshackle buildings and trailers featuring communal kitchens and laundry buildings that catered to the chemically and electrically sensitive. (http://www.ehcd.com/websteen/seagoville.htm)

My Window © 2009 Julie Laffin

But being a northerner, after a few days of heat in the triple digits without air conditioning, I began to melt down. On the third day I took fourteen cold showers in an effort to ward off the heat stroke I was certain was imminent. Ecology Housing provided air conditioners and offered several options but I was unable to tolerate any of the available A/C units due to their musty smell. If the intensity of the heat had broken, or I could have gotten the plastic smell out of a brand new air conditioner my husband had shipped me, I might have stuck it out. I liked the people there and being away from the very polluted air of Dallas was a relief. But two damaged discs in my cervical spine and resultant pinched nerves intervened, and the twenty mile (each way) daily commute to the clinic became prohibitive. Driving for me was clearly not an option since it was only aggravating the problem in extremely painful and inconvenient ways.

What I would Wear if I Could Go Out © 2009 Julie Laffin

Being disabled and a thousand miles from home, and because I am severely triggered by even minute amounts of fragrances of any kind, I knew my options were very limited. And although Building Seven seemed ridiculously expensive, after my already failed venture at Ecology Housing, I decided to hunker down to try and make it work.

Familiar Territory © 2009 Julie Laffin

My first order of business was washing, washing and rewashing all the linens and towels which surprisingly remedied the problem for the most part. For the first time in five years I could use linens that didn’t belong to me and sleep on a mattress that wasn’t my own. (I actually had my own futon and linens from home in tow but did not have to use them). The last mattress I had attempted to sleep on in a fragrance-free B&B a couple years ago caused severe neurological problems for me. I woke up with waves of shocking sensations in my brain and ended up sleeping in my car, sitting up in the front seat with all my possessions for the road trip crammed in beside me. (When I’m on a road trip now I don’t even bother searching for accommodations I can tolerate along the way. So many failures have converted me to a bona fide car camper).

Though relieved to have made my unit largely tolerable, I soon became informed of some events that were going to be hard to avoid: the stripes on the pavement in the parking lot were about to be repainted and an herbicide would be sprayed on the bushes on the grounds. For many there is no tolerated herbicide, even those claiming to be less damaging than their extremely toxic counterparts. But my main fear was what the impact would be as the city of Dallas launched an ongoing, aggressive pesticide campaign to eradicate the threat of West Nile virus. Somehow, tucked into my hermetically sealed chamber, I did okay. The day the lot was painted several parked cars outside my window prevented them from painting the area closest to my unit. The evening of the landscape spraying I spent the night with friends, who were renting a non-toxic home built by another environmentally artist I know. Others at my building were not so lucky and some left for, you guessed it, Ecology Housing, in search of healthier air and avoidance of further chemical exposures.

Oxygen © 2009 Julie Laffin

There were some ironic twists that were not lost on me: 1). I had timed my trip to avoid crop dusting near my house in northern Illinois but was now living next to an expressway hiding from West Nile spraying 2.) In spite of the spraying, I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes that flew into my room every time I opened the door. (I grew up in north central Wisconsin but have never witnessed such a ravenous bumper crop of the creatures. While they made a blood meal of me each night, none of my neighbors on the upper floors even noticed them). 3). The premiere environmental illness clinic in the world and its associated non-toxic housing is in an unbearably toxic location.

There were twenty units at Building Seven but after being there two weeks I had only met the inhabitants of eight. I’m sure some were bed bound and many, quarantined by their symptoms, rarely if ever left their apartments. Gratefully, there was a network of individuals who would, for a fee, do errands for the residents. They showed up fragrance and chemical free and though their services seemed expensive, they were a godsend. I came to rely on one person in particular who frequently grocery shopped for me and took me for a nerve conduction study that I had dreaded (after a well meaning friend described how they stuck a giant needle into your spine and then ran electric current through it).  Her steadfastness made all the difference.

Some residents in addition to being chemically intolerant were also severely electrically sensitive. In an effort to respect their illness, I did not use my computer, cell phone or television during the month I lived at Building Seven unless I got the all clear that my neighbors would be out during a particular period of time. Being without email I felt cut off from my mainstays of communication at times (we had to turn off our cell phones as we entered the clinic as well). But the presence of my neighbors at Building Seven helped ease the isolation. I befriended an accountant from Missouri and we shared food, transportation and compared notes of our experiences at the clinic. Her tipping point was exposure to a fungicide-laden house paint that had been applied to the interior of her house. There were couples and families at Building Seven as well. One whole family had been made ill by a vaccine. Another had been poisoned by high levels of the breakdown isomers of DDT present in her home. One person who had previously recovered was re-injured during a flight to South America when the plane was pesticided. Some chemically injured residents grew ill gradually due to a series of exposures and others did not know the sources of their illness. When I asked one woman what her most detrimental chemical exposure had been she replied, “being born”.

I understood what she meant. We all live in a world where the constancy of chemical contact is unavoidable and the burden on our bodies is growing. But my condition was acquired. Even though there were significant causal events, one chemical exposure in particular, it happened gradually as the chronic Lyme Disease became more deeply entrenched, devastating my immune system. Though now a member of an exclusive club, one to which I nonconsensually belong, I’m a fortunate member by comparison with others. A few years ago I became a universal reactor (triggered by all classes of inhaled substances, synthetic and natural) and currently live a life of social isolation. Today there are few public spaces I can enter even briefly and some days my own house is problematic for me. But unlike so many, I have a roof over my head, a husband who loves and believes in me and works tirelessly to protect and provide for me. I have family, friends and colleagues who respect my limitations and choose to continue our relationships. I have access at least, to some forms of medical care. In the environmental illness community, we all know of people living in their cars or in tents because they cannot find housing their bodies can tolerate and/or their financial resources can sustain. In some instances, if they can find tolerable housing they can’t be exposed to the lawn chemicals and laundry products of nearby neighbors.  (Or cell towers and other sources of electro smog, factories, agricultural production or open burning. The list of offending sources that trigger symptoms of environmental illness is long, sadly). There are many who have been abandoned by spouses, family members and the medical profession and who have been stripped of their jobs and careers. By losing their ability to function in the world at all, some have lost everything.

Gratefully, our civilization seems to be addressing some of the issues we are grappling with however slowly. Questions about the toxicity of building materials, our food supply, personal care products and wireless devices are making their way into the mainstream media. I would argue, as would others, that none of us are exempt from the effects of our environment no matter how healthy we appear to be or how insulated we think we are. My experiences at Ecology Housing and Building Seven reminded me that I’m not alone, but this knowledge is a blessing and a curse. The blessing is, of course, that there is power and “safety” in numbers and awareness will eventually grow enough to impact public policy decisions. But the burden is knowing that a lot more people will be affected by environmental illness before there is enough of a sea change to prevent it from becoming extremely commonplace.