Vulnerability and Mortality

A bright yellow car stopped in the carpark and the passenger waved. I assumed was an apology for nearly squishing my toes, and it wasn’t until I had walked a few more steps that I realised it was Lance, an old forestry colleague of mine.

I went back to shake his hand and asked what he was doing in my neck of the woods.

He was on his way to a reunion of his intake group for which he had been the organiser until he took crook with the flu when they discovered he had leukemia. It had been a lesser form, but the flu had caused it to become aggressive and he has just two months left!

He refused chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant because six years previously his wife suffered the same thing and took the treatment. Basically he didn’t want to go through the same suffering because he is not in pain and the prognosis was that the treatment had a ten percent chance of giving a positive outcome.

Thirty years ago, a woman rushed into my office asking me we had oxygen because the guy sitting in her car was suffering a severe asthma attack. We had no oxygen so an ambulance was called, which was a minimum of 20 minutes away.

We laid him on the grass outside and it was distressing seeing him struggling for breath. Plainly he was not getting enough oxygen, so I started mouth to mouth, which was not so tasty because he was a heavy smoker! His raised stomach meant my breath was going directly into his stomach rather than his lungs, so I pushed his stomach, which brought my breath back up, laced with the smell from his stomach contents!

I persisted despite my certainty he had died and when the ambulance arrived they gave him electric shocks but he could not be revived.

The ambulance people said that the tubes to his lungs were blocked with mucus and no, pushing a garden hose down there would not have been effective, nor would shocks from a nearby electric fence. I lingering regret that I could have been more effective!

We rely on the white coat brigade to provide us with answers but some of the answers are still beyond us. Both of these cases were arguably due to environmental factors.

The asthma attack was brought on by Radiata Pine pollen and my forestry mate was likely exposed to workplace dangers.

Among those dangers was the chemical product, 245T used for the semi-control of gorse. Foresters and farmers used the stuff by the drum load and it was finally banned because chemists could not remove the last small traces of the carcinogenic dioxin. 245T treated gorse was burnt off as standard practice – for 25 years I was responsible for fires covering 100 acres per year.

We were told by the manufacturer’s rep that there was as much dioxin in a 44 gallon drum of 245T as is released when a plastic bottle is burnt!

Even barbequed meat has traces of dioxin – it is a by-product of burning. Rubbish burning, smelting, chemical manufacture and cigarette smoke all release dioxins.

A recent report alleges that glyphosate ‘probably causes cancer’. I remember assisting with trials of the stuff and overhearing a conversation between a fixed wing pilot and a helicopter pilot about which craft was the most effective. What staggered me about that conversation was that both paraquat and glyphosate (a translocator) were being used to desiccate the tops of potatoes to facilitate harvesting. This anecdote happened 30 years ago, but ding-a-ling go the alarm bells!

Out visiting the other night, the moment I entered the house, I knew there was one of those air freshener gizmos polluting the atmosphere! There is nothing wrong with my nose - I can tell rose from lavender or lily of the valley from geranium. The label always boasts something fragrant but smell for yourself and then sniff the original product – you will find it is simply a chemical-generated smell – where did I say dioxins come from? Oh yes, chemical manufacture.

Where do household odours come from? The rubbish bin under the sink, shoes left in the hallway, smokers, pets, vermin, fungus, cooking (especially cabbage) and of course, the dunny.

In all cases, with just a little thought those sources can be totally eliminated – maybe open some windows or boil a few cloves in a pot! Don’t expose your family to those damn chemicals! You may live a little longer!

I came away from that house with a slight headache, lacking concentration and a little tight in the chest – I never had such a reaction after working in the nursery chemical store, which housed all sorts of nasties!