Peace and Environment News* June 1995
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Peace and Environment News * June 1995 |
by Estelle Taylor
The University of Toronto is working to establish an agreed-upon conclusive definition of environmental hypersensitivity in order to properly diagnose and treat the illness, said Dr. Lynn Marshall at a recent talk put on by the Allergy and Environmental Health Association.
The May 18 talk at McNabb Community Centre was attended by forty-five people, many suffering from the illness.
Marshall is a research associate in the University of Toronto's department of preventative medicine and biostatistics. She's working on the University of Toronto Health Survey, meant to establish a definition.
It's important to define the illness, she said, because most general practitioners aren't aware of what it is and are improperly diagnosing people. Past definitions of the illness often said it is a multi-system illness having chronic symptoms, that symptoms are provoked or worsened with exposure and that exposures provoke people at levels tolerated by most. But these past definitions don't agree on all things and don't include descriptive data, which this survey wants to do.
Marshall said the study has several purposes: to find out how likely it is that symptoms are due to environmental hypersensitivities, to identify people who are the most and least likely to have the illness, and to get "some inkling of what may have been the trigger" for the illness—biological, environmental or psychosocial—in order to "get some understanding of how much this problem exists out in society."
The Health Survey was pretested twice before its present run of 4,500 surveys. The surveys have been given to general practitioners and environmental physicians in Toronto and Mississauga for them to hand out to their patients. Two thousand have been returned so far. It will be next year before results are published.
Dr. Marshall spoke that night "to try to explain why research takes so long," because as an Arnprior doctor who treated hypersensitive people for many years, she says she understands the frustration over inadequate recognition and treatment of the illness.
Marshall is sympathetic to the many sufferers' anger over government inaction on this issue, but insists defining the illness is an important step towards government action. "You have to be able to identify what it is you want to treat," she said to one frustrated listener.
Knowledge and action about environmental hypersensitivities is moving forward inch by inch, said Marshall.
"If only it moved foot by foot or mile by mile."
Converted July 7, 2000 - Lg
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