In June, 1972, the Johnson family lay sleeping in their rustic house, built alongside a brook in a Western state. At around 6:30 a.m., without prior warning, a helicopter came in low over their rooftop and began discharging a heavy white fog along the power company’s right-of-way, which adjoined the house. Four times it swooped down to release a toxic plume of herbicide, in order to kill all vegetation growing beneath the high steel towers of the company.
Although the wind was only three miles per hour that morning, the powerful downdraft of the helicopter’s blades propelled the chemicals in the direction of the sleeping household.
Awakened by the sound of the chopper, Mr. Johnson aroused the family, whose members gulped down a hasty breakfast and left the house. As soon as they emerged from the door, however, they were enveloped in a cloud of Tordon 100, a herbicide which contains Pictoran and 2,4-D.
The worst affected was Johnson’s teenage daughter, Lydia. She felt nauseated and dizzy and had persistent headaches for weeks following this incident. Her eyes were dry, with a burning sensation, and she suffered from shortness of breath and coughing, even when the family moved to Johnson’s mother’s house, miles away. Many bizarre symptoms followed this exposure. All that summer the children were tired almost all the time and slept for long hours at a stretch, although they were normally active and energetic. In September, they returned to their home for the first time since the spraying.
The helicopter had left a wide swath of destruction in its path. From the powerlines, over and past their house, and up the hill behind them, the vegetation and plants were either dead, dying, or deformed. A beautiful fig tree which had stood in their yard was leafless and barren.
Not long after this, Johnson was hospitalized with a mysterious “lung problem.” By June of the next year, Lydia’s eyes no longer focussed properly, and she could not take final exams. Her lips were swollen, and her eyelids were sometimes so enlarged that she could not see out of them. Doctors at a local hospital refused to treat her, however, claiming that her problems were all “psychosomatic” and “hysterical.”
By December, 1973, Lydia had trouble walking. She could not maintain her balance and moved in a wobbly fashion, like a drunkard. She had to support herself by hanging onto furniture or clinging to the balustrade when she walked downstairs. Her local general practitioner referred her to a neurologist, who suggested that she was “trying to get attention” by feigning symptoms. He prescribed tranquilizers. Although not particularly susceptible to chemicals before being “abated,” Lydia now became susceptible to many substances, including tobacco smoke, perfumes, deodorants, motor exhausts, gasoline, and so forth. Although her worst symptoms decreased with time, she contracted severe headaches and difficulty in breathing whenever exposed to various chemicals. When she was tested in my hospital Ecology Unit, she was found to have allergies to wheat, corn, and a number of other foods. More dramatic, however, were her reactions to chemicals commonly encountered in daily life. After having avoided chemical exposure for many days, she was given a feeding of commercial apples, a food which she tolerated in their unsprayed form. The first feeding was followed by repeated clearing of the throat, coughing, and dizziness on sudden change of position. The second feeding of commercial tomato and tomato juice was followed by a sensation of burning in her mouth. A third meal of commercially canned chicken was followed by a headache at ten minutes, which rapidly increased in intensity and was soon accompanied by canker sores in the mouth, aching joints, aching leg muscles, and insomnia that night.
A feeding of commercially canned cherries brought on aching legs, while commercial lettuce caused a stomachache and shaking, quivering, and depression. These symptoms became severe about an hour and a half later, and she also cried and sobbed.
Finally, commercial frozen cauliflower brought on severe depression and crying after fifteen minutes, as well as residual shaking and numbness of the lower limbs on the following morning. It is noteworthy that this numbness was identical in feeling to that which followed the original spraying incident, although it was less severe than that experienced in 1972.
Despite the undemonstrable theories of her neurologists, Lydia Johnson was suffering from the chemical-susceptibility problem, brought on in her case by a massive exposure to herbicide months before. This initial exposure was maintained, albeit at a lower level, by daily exposure to common environmental chemicals, such as residues found in commercial food.
Air pollution from herbicides is becoming more common. Because of the use of similar defoliants during the Vietnam War, some of these effects are becoming better known. One of the chemicals to which Lydia Johnson was exposed, 2,4-D, is also an ingredient in the now infamous Agent Orange. Reports of Vietnam veterans sound remarkably like the symptoms reported by Lydia Johnson. According to one report on such veterans, published in the New York Times:
They say it is a poison that fell from the sky, a herbicide that was supposed to kill only unwanted plants. Instead, they insist, it has made them sick and changed their lives, and even though many years have passed since their exposure to it, they fear it still. They fear it has started processes within them that will make them sick again and perhaps kill them. No more eloquent—and frightening—condemnation could be made of the virtually unrestrained chemical contamination of our environment.
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