Letter from Europe 50/99:

Where there is fire, there is carbon monoxide, where there is carbon monoxide, there is vulnerability, where there is vulnerability, there is illness and disability and death in great pain ..

Today, Carbon Monoxide (CO) is the most commonly encountered and pervasive poison in our environment. It is responsible for more deaths than any other single poison, and for enormous suffering and morbidity in those who survive.

Some studies found that 25-40% of people died during acute exposure, while 15-40% of the survivors suffered immediate or delayed neuropsychological deficit. Now, an emerging body of evidence suggests that longer exposures to lower levels of CO, ie. chronic CO poisoning, are capable of producing a myriad of debilitating residual effects that may continue for days, weeks, months and even years, or to be precise: as a rule ą all one's life ...

Recurrent acute poisoning ·

Generalized symptoms: Malaise, flu-like symptoms, fatigue ·

Cardiovascular: Dyspnea on exertion, chest pain, palpitations ·

Psychiatric: Lethargy, confusion, depression, impulsiveness, di-stractibility, hallucination, confabulation, agitation.

· Gastrointestinal: Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain

· Neurologic: Headache, drowsiness, dizziness, weakness, confusi-on, visual disturbance, syncope, seizure, fecal and urinary incon-tinence, memory disturbance, gate disturbance, bizarre neurolo-gic symptoms, coma.  Transient loss of consciousness, even in the absence of other symptoms, is of grave significance.

· Chronic exposure: Chronic exposures also present with the above sym-ptoms. However, they may present with gradual onset neuropsychiatric symptoms or simply new impairment of cognitive ability.

· Neurologic/Neuropsychiatric: Memory disturbance (most common) in-cluding retrograde and anterograde amnesia with amnestic confabulato-ry states, emotional lability, impaired judgement, decreased cognitive ability, stupor, coma, gait disturbance, movement disorders, rigidity, brisk reflexes, apraxia, agnosia, tic disorders, hearing and vestibular dysfunction, blindness and psychosis. Long term exposures or severe acute exposures frequently result in long-term neuropsychiatric seque-lae. Additionally there exists a group that develops delayed neu-ropsychiatric symptoms, often after severe intoxications associated with coma. After recovery from the initial incident, the patients present several days to weeks later with neuropsychiatric symptoms such as those just described. Two-thirds will eventually have no complete re-covery. Ill-health may remain long after clinical recovery.

· Predicting and preventing long-term complications such as toxic-induced loss of tolerance / grave chemical intolerance and delayed to-xic encephalo(-myelo-neuro-)pathy have been the object of recent stu-dies.

Here is a link between what is called "low level" exposure to thousands of chemicals, indoors and outdoors, and adverse health effects, including cancer, between chemical exposure, chemical injury and grave disease: dangerous chemical-intolerance. Everyone is at risk. No one is safe.

In reality we are only revealing and correcting -for the first time in medicine- a gigantic misconception and a terrific misunderstanding:

it is my back-pain and your migraine, my mother's depression and your son's aggression, your wife's abdominal pain and my patient's cancer, my fellow's fury and your fellow's amok-run, my grandfather's helplessness and your secretary's stultification, my aunt's defective vision and your uncle's polyneuropathy, my colleagues's mercilessness and your neighbor's Chronic Toxic Encephalopathy, my brother's angiocardiopathy and your daughter's premature and long infirmity --- and last not least the incomprehensible lust for murder and the inconceivable belief in witches of our fellow countrymen..

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