Hi,

First of all, I want to thank you for providing this forum. I hope that enough people will read these horror stories, and quit using deadly chemicals.

My name is Karen. My husband and I were living a fairly fast paced life back in 1989. We both had full time jobs, but were blessed enough to live in a peaceful, country setting, in Powell, Tennessee. Our home was built by my husband's grandfather. The man had built it with his own two hands, and everything about it said, "home". We loved the house, and so did everyone who ever saw it. It was beautiful. My husband and I truly enjoyed our peaceful times there, away from the fast paced world in which we lived.

One day, I was walking outside beside the house, and I saw a termite. I told my husband about it, and we had a man who worked for Pioneer Exterminating Company come and look at our home. He said that we had severe damage from termites and powder post beetles. My husband had some allergies, so we questioned him about the chemical that would be used if we contracted with them to treat our house. He assured us that the chemical was totally non-toxic to humans and that it contained no allergens. So we contracted for them to do the job.

We both worked until very late at night, and usually didn't get home until after midnight. So, we usually slept late into the day. We asked the representative from Pioneer Exterminating Company if we needed to leave the house while they sprayed the chemical. They said no, because they would not be coming inside the house at all. They would only spray under the house and drill into the foundation. So we were sleeping when the man came to spray. I woke up and I could barely breathe. I shook my husband, but he wouldn't wake up. I finally, after several minutes, got him to wake, and we went outside. We asked the guy who was spraying why it was choking us inside the house. It was then that he told us that we weren't even supposed to be inside the house. He told us to leave and come back in eight hours.

When we came back, the odor was so strong that we put fans in the windows to pull the air out of the house. During this time, I felt so weird. I even hallucinated, and I wasn't on drugs. It was scary. I thought I was losing my mind. My husband was having terrible muscle spasms, I mean the kind that paralyzes a person. We didn't know what was going on, but we suspected that it was the pesticide.

We called Pioneer Exterminating Company and told them what was going on. They assured us that the chemical they used, Dursban TC, was totally safe and could not possibly be causing our symptoms. We kept airing the house out. Things got worse. We began to see wet places appear on our hardwood floors, and we knew it was the bug spray because of the odor.

We decided to see a doctor concerning our symptoms. We were told to leave the house, and I mean move out. We had blood tests done, one of them was called an antibody assay test. To make a long story short, both of our tests came back with horrifying results. We found that the way we were feeling was directly due to pesticide poisoning. Poisoning! When I heard that word, my heart nearly stopped!

We had the Tennessee Department of Agriculture come to the house to take wood chip samples to test the level of pesticide present in the home. While all this was going on, we had to live in a stripped down, metal shed, because we found that everywhere we went made us sicker. This metal shed had nothing in it, and we cleaned it as best we could. We had no plumbing or electricity. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was not safe and comfortable. When the results from the wood chip sample tests were returned to us, we were blown away. There was 32 times the amount listed as safe for human habitation. We were told that we could never again live in the home. So there it went, along with my health and my husband's health, our paid for home.

After that, we sued Pioneer Exterminating Company. After our lives were carefully examined, and many attacks on our characters were made, they settled with us for enough to build the home we now live in. It is a log cabin made with untreated wood. We supervised all the construction, and made sure of everything that went in the house from the footers up to the roof. We now have a chemical free home. But both of us are permanently disabled, and doomed to spend our lives isolated from the world, because the world makes us sick. Our social lives exist only through telephone conversations, and internet activities.

Dursban TC destroyed my immune system. I catch everything I'm exposed to, and usually take 4 times longer than a normal person to get over it. I fear that one day, my body will not fight it off anymore. My husband suffered severe central nervous system damage. He is in constant pain. He and I are on the young side of middle aged, and our lives have been over for ten years. We do the best we can to cope. We rely on God to help us through surviving another day.

It's been over ten years since this happened to me and my husband. We are sicker now than we were then. We are to the point now, that we are so sensitive to chemicals, that even a friend dropping by to visit means several days in bed due to the exposure to the detergent they wash their clothes in!

I don't know what's going on or why people tolerate the use of deadly chemicals in our homes and businesses. Perhaps it's just ignorance. I know I was totally ignorant to the dangers of pesticides, that is, until pesticides took my life, as I knew it, away forever. I hope that someday very soon that everyone will wake up and realize that we are killing ourselves and our planet.

Another thing we learned in our experience, was that the government agencies that I had always believed were there to protect the citizens, were the very ones to cause problems and try to cover up what had happened to us. We learned that our government did not care about little folks like us, but was there to care for big business, and to line their own pockets. It was a shock for us to learn this about the country we love so much. I think a lot of people are now learning the same thing, unfortunately.

Thank you, again, for providing a forum for people like me to tell our stories. It helps to get it out.

Sincerely,

Karen J. Bauc

 

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