Unforgettable incidents during my profession: Chloroform…

Modern clinical toxicology deals with a lot about environmental poisons and illness. I have experienced thousands of these problems from my patients. Here I like to inform you a few case studies to show that it can play a vital role in your health. Today, it is about Chloroform as an environmental poison.

A worried wife telephoned me and told that her husband had become an alcoholic. He drank the whole weekend although he never drank so much earlier. Moreover, Monday to Friday he was not at all drinking. I asked her where he was working and told that it would be better her husband talked to me personally. I talked to him over the phone and he came to my institute next day. We took blood sample from him for analysis. We analysed also the oil with which he was working from Monday to Friday. We detected an unknown solvent from his blood as well as from the oil.

When I talked to his Company Doctor he wanted me to drop the whole matter because even his wife was telling that he was an alcoholic. Moreover, the doctor told me,” you say some volatile substances, but as long as you could not say the correct substance, my company has no fault”.

I needed one small additional analytical instrument for that specific purpose and we bought it immediately. The unknown substance was confirmed as chloroform and the whole riddle was cleared. They heated the chloroform 60 degrees Celsius and now and then the worker had to open a small window to control. The worker breathed the vapours eight hours a day, Monday to Friday and these had influenced his central nervous system.

On Saturday morning he could not inhale the vapour but his body needed it. He took the alternative, alcohol to sedate his nerves. The multinational company had problems with the Health Department. These analyses brought me few hundred Euros but the instrument that was bought costed my institute more than 5000 Euros and it shows how difficult it is to deal with for a single person to fight against a multinational company. With the unlimited support from my boss I had the chance to prove this truth.

It was very much interesting to find this organic solvent even in the blood of administrative staffs who were away from the production area.

Chloroform is an anaesthetic agent. Inhalation of chloroform vapours depresses the central nervous system. It is also a carcinogen and higher incidence of birth defect may be possible. It is immediately dangerous to health and life even if 500 ppm is taken. If we breathe for a short time taking about 900 ppm dizziness, fatigue and headache are the symptoms. Liver damage may be caused by chronic chloroform exposure.

Unforgettable incidents during my profession: Permethrin…

Modern clinical toxicology deals with a lot about environmental poisons and illness. I have experienced thousands of these problems from my patients. Here I like to inform you a few case studies to show that it can play a vital role in your health. Today it is about permethrin.

A woman of 50 years came to me with problems connected with her nervous system. In two hour conversation, there was no clue. Finally, I wanted to know about the articles in her house. She did not want to give any information about her bedroom because it was her most private place. After 15 minutes discussion and my threatening to send her away she agreed to talk.

We had found out the exposition very quickly. She had spread white woollen carpet with thousands of frills in her bed room. Normally woollen carpets are soaked in pesticide solution before they were sold. She had that carpet; the contamination took place in her bed room. The equilibrium between the carpet, air and the walls in the room was established for ever. So in her most private place she was getting the exposition. I asked her to remove the carpet and she did not want because she had paid more than € 6000 for that. Finally she had removed it, presented it to her son, her health became better and her son had no problem with that. This show how important our detoxification and free radical scavenging systems are.

This is a very good example to understand how difficult the process of diagnosis is. Further, the poisons will not affect all persons as in the case of flu. If the detoxification system is perfect, you have no problem with most of the poisons. If there are defects in the genes or in the enzymes or if you do not take enough antioxidants along with the food, the problem starts.

The insecticide used in the carpet was permethrin (pyrethrum is a plant product obtained from dried flowers and pyrethroids are manipulated pesticides from pyrethrum with chlorine, bromine, fluorine or nitro compounds). Nature gives us harmless pesticides like pyrethrum and we humans manipulate this and make them good poisons to us.

It was also used by airlines in their planes to kill the insects.

We could estimate the amount of permethrin in her blood and urine. The woollen carpet had high amount of permethrin too.

You must only buy furniture and carpets free from any poisons. If the source is your house then your health has to suffer a lot.

Unforgettable incidents during my profession: Pentachlorophenol

Modern clinical toxicology deals with a lot about environmental poisons and illness. I have experienced thousands of these problems from my patients. Here I like to inform you a few case studies to show that it can play a vital role in your health.

I got a blood sample from a child and the doctor told me that he could not understand the perplexing symptoms and requested me to find out some clue from the blood. We conducted all the analytical studies in blood and urine qualitatively and quantitatively in the lab of clinical Toxicology and found that the amount of one poisonous chemical was increased tenfold compared to the reference values of an adult.

I talked to the mother about the possibility of exposure to this poisonous chemical. There was no chance for exposure and the parents were very much worried. Finally I asked the mother to send her child to the Kindergarten Monday to Friday, go to the doctor, take blood sample from the child and go for holidays with the child for a week to a North Sea Island where even cars are banned and there were no chances of any exposition.

Returning back she had to go to a doctor and take blood sample from her child once again. She did exactly what we told. In Friday’s sample the child had this poisonous chemical, about ten times higher than the reference value of adults. When they returned from the island, the poison level was in the lower part of the reference value. We made a guess and we gathered the details about the Kindergarten. In the kindergarten there are wooden benches and wooden play equipments of children, such as, ship, slide, swing and seesaw. All are very clean and in very good condition. We gave the blood values to the doctor and he forwarded to the government departments, nobody wants to believe. Somebody from the Government rang my boss and asked him whether I am a reliable chemist and his answer was, “leave this as my problem and as long our toxicologist is doing good to the public we inform all the people concerned about this”. Such a trusting boss must everybody have to do good to the patients.

Finally the concerned authorities decided to send the blood to a high security toxicological lab belonging to the Central Government. After two days my values were confirmed and the two Kindergartens were closed. We checked further the city’s other Kindergartens and everywhere the problem was the same. All these wooden things were removed and the contamination was also controlled.

The important chemical was at that time used as a wood preservative, the notorious pentachlorophenol. This was also by-product from orange T production. Orange T was used in Vietnam War to destroy the forests in Vietnam. The chemical waste from the company contained high amount of pentachlorophenol. Instead of disposing it properly it was mixed with the paints which have been used for the benches and other wooden articles in the kindergarten. This sort of poison tourism was a cheap disposal of the deadly wastes in poor countries at the cost of the population there.

During the second half of the 1980s, this chemical was found in all the human beings in the world including Eskimos and persons living in the Amazon regions of South America.

Fortunately the half-life period of pentachlorophenol is 30 hours and it could be excreted from the body without much problem.

It was banned in Germany in the 1990s.

Long-time exposition could be detected in hair and nail.

Keep your environment clean and the environmental poisons cause more sickness than we all think. The problem is the right diagnosis, as there are no separate symptoms for environmental illness.

I hear very often contradictory views and opinions about food, taking and avoiding, very confusing, could you explain me?

It is very simple to explain you; normal people know lot about food which they like and enjoy.

But the relationship among food, environmental poisons, detoxification, free radical scavenging and metabolism are not understood by all. If you have all the information about a person, you make an individual food plan which belongs to him only. The other person has a different combination of these factors and so what is good for you is not good for him and vice versa. That is the reason why the recommendations are contradictory and you should not compare two diet plans.

Eat this, do not eat that is easy to tell, but you must be always in a position to explain what you do and what you mean and why. Then there will be no understanding problems.