Does a coworker have the right to wear chemical-based perfumes or other scented products even though...?...she knows that another coworker has severe chemical allergies?
I have multiple chemical sensitivities or environmental illness, which in my case means headaches, dizziness, coughing spells, sneezing, etc. This is debilitating. My coworker blew up at me. She actually believes that if the scents are not on her skin but are in her clothing then it must be ok. Ridiculous? I know.
But her reaction was so over the top I wanted to get various Y/A opinions. Btw, multiple chemical sensitivity is legally recognized as a disability. I don't want to have to go there with my colleague, but wearing perfume or other scented products creates an environmental barrier for people like me who are debilitated by them.
It would be like removing the ramp needed by a person in a wheelchair and saying, "Oops. Sorry. Deal with it."
Reported in the latest paper on Recognition of MCS, the commissioner of Social Security Administration said on Oct. 31 2007 that SSA recognized MCS a medical determinable impairment. He said this in a legal memo submitted to a federal court that had demanded a clear statement of SSA's position on the subject.
For a copy of the legal memo, send a SASE to MCS R&R.
To order the whole recognition paper (now 23 pages) call: Albert Donnay, MHS, Exec. Director, MCS Referral & Resources, Inc.
508 Westgate Road, Baltimore MD 21229-2343. Phone:410-362-6400, Fax:410- 362-6401, e-mail:donnaya@rtk.net
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- Disability and Fragrance in the Workplace. "The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued an administrative decision . . . that upholds MCS as a disability and states that a fragrance free workplace is not an accommodation that can be simply dismissed as unreasonable." Our Toxic Times, Volume 12, Number 5 Issue Number 131, May 2001. Chemical Injury Information Network Newsletter. http://www.ciin.org
When you use "perfume" you are using powerful chemicals regulated by the industry that sells them. They may not affect you now, but it doesn’t mean they won’t affect someone next to you. The chemicals go directly into the blood stream when applied to the skin, and absorbed into the skin from clothing. Inhaled chemical fumes go straight to our brains where they can do major harm, and many of these chemical fumes have a “narcotic” effect.
Contact Dr. Raymond Singer, Ph.D.
Symptoms of neurotoxicity: Toxic chemicals can damage the nervous system and brain. Such chemicals are neurotoxic. A person may or may not be aware of neurotoxic damage when it occurs.
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An Overview of MCS by Cynthia Wilson
Our mission:To provide the highest quality clinical and forensic services for the evaluation and diagnoses of neurobehavioral, neuropsychological and neurotoxic illness from chemicals, injuries and drugs.
Our experience: Evaluating neurobehavioral function and the effects of toxic chemicals, drugs and substances (neurotoxic agents) on the nervous system since 1979; serving the Courts (federal, state and administrative) as a forensic expert witness in both civil and criminal matters since 1983.
Back when doctors believed their patients and before psychosomatic illness and stress became a catch-all for illnesses doctors couldn't diagnose, there is evidence to suggest that doctors were diagnosing chemical sensitivities as vapors. Vapors were described as an exhalation of bodily organs held to affect the physical and/or mental condition or as a depressed or hysterical nervous condition. Then in the early 1950's, Theron Randolph, M.D., recognized that people were getting sick from their environment, hence the original name Environmental Illness. Read at ciin.org
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Wednesday, 2 April 2008
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