Poisoned: Failed by Western Medicine, Modern Construction, and Corporate Interests: Non-Toxic Home, #1

By Non-Toxic Home

These are the harrowing yet inspiring memoirs of a woman who refused to be another industry statistic.

This book is a warning to all who read it: failure to question "the experts" in a given field can have catastrophic repercussions.

For 30 years, Leanna trusted her health to the experts: doctors, nurses, governmental regulating agencies, and so on. Heeding doctor's advice, she took the recommended pharmaceuticals, resulting in years of taking over 75 pills per day. Trusting industry regulators, she slept on latex mattresses, breathed in noxious carpet VOCs, carried her cell phone with her everywhere, and used fragranced personal care products.

It nearly killed her.

Determined to turn her health around despite living in moldy apartments, struggling to breathe in smoky rentals, and fleeing exposures to toxic natural rubber latex, these memoirs share the trials and tribulations of a life of battling chronic illness, failed by a system that ignores root causes in the interest of corporate profit.

Heed this warning. It could happen to you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Reece
• Release date: Nov 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215313701

Non-Toxic Home

The dynamic husband and wife team at Non-Toxic Home are on a mission to help others improve their health and cope with life-altering diagnoses including Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS), Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity Syndrome (EHS), latex allergy, mold illness, food allergies, and environmental illness. Trusted voices in healthy living, these natural health advocates reside in picturesque Southern Indiana in a custom healthy home that represents the culmination of years of careful independent research and planning. They enjoy spending time with each other and their rescue feline, admiring the majesty of nature, and studying to show themselves approved unto God.

Book preview

© 2022 by David Reece

All rights reserved. No reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of the copyright holder, except by reviewers who may quote brief passages with appropriate credit.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Non-Toxic Home Series

Chapter One

My Story Begins

Chapter Two

It’s All in Your Head

Chapter Three

School Daze

Chapter Four

The Smoky Apartment

Chapter Five

Love and Social Work

Chapter Six

Technocracy Fails

Chapter Seven

Rental Roulette

Chapter Eight

Rental Roullette

Chapter Nine

Technocracy Fails Again

Chapter Ten

The Inheritance

Chapter Eleven

Putting in the Work

Chapter Twelve

Healing

Chapter Thirteen

Fried From Above

Chapter Fourteen

Moving Forward

A Note from Non-Toxic Home

About Non-Toxic Home

Disclaimer

This book is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, prevent, mitigate, or otherwise address any symptoms or diagnoses. Always consult the experts in any given field as this book is not intended to supersede professional, individualized advice. The author and copyright holder disclaim any liability in connection with the use of the information in this book. Reading further in this book indicates that the reader agrees to these terms.

Always do your own exhaustive research and consider your personal circumstances and medical history, consulting multiple experts in any given field of inquiry.

Introduction to the

Non-Toxic Home Series

We live in a toxic world. Simply tune in to the nightly news or listen to a radio report and you’ll likely hear about the latest class action lawsuit for chemical exposure or illegal chemical dumping scheme. As humans, our minds have the tendency to assume that we’ll magically be excluded from harm due to immoral or criminal behavior. But the truth is, we are all being harmed on a daily basis. Moreover, this harm isn’t occurring just at work or in our car, but in the one space in which we are supposed to be safe from harm: our homes.

As a result of multiple environmental factors, my health has been ravaged by this toxic world. I’m not alone. Countless other health warriors face diagnoses as I do. Some spiral so deeply into depression that they simply cannot climb back out. Countless individuals end up homeless, unable to find a marginally tolerable place to live. While I have not personally lived in my car, it has been a consideration on multiple occasions. Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Mold Illness, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity Syndrome, Latex Allergy, and other environmental illnesses are becoming more common as the world we live in becomes increasingly more toxic.

I’m fortunate enough to have found a safe enough place to land. While my hope is that those who are seeking safe(r) housing are able to do so as well, those who are in robust health should take heed of our woes. These issues and many others, such as cancer, often are at least partially caused by environmental factors that can be addressed during building, remodeling, home maintenance, and personal daily choices. It is my hope that the Non Toxic Home series of books shines a light of hope for those who are suffering while acting as a warning beacon to those who wish to maintain their health and well-being.

While publishing one extensive book would be ideal, the reality is that I have a long way to go in my healing journey. At this point I am grateful to be alive and absolutely thrilled that I have only had to use one dose of emergency epinephrine since we moved into our healthy home in late May of 2018. As such, my ability to write is sporadic and limited, and writing one lengthy tome would take many years. This is time during which individuals such as yourself could be benefitting from my experience and knowledge.

After the completion of our very own healthy home, my husband and I were amazed at the sheer number of requests for more information as to what we did, how we did it, and why we did it. Following countless moves in the quest of safe, affordable housing due to latex allergy, severe MCS, MCAS, and mold illness, I spent years studying non toxic building options, common sources of moisture intrusion, best practice building procedures, and more. I consulted with professionals such as mold literate architects, read stacks upon stacks of building biology/building science/ bau biology books, and spoke with many individuals who had already achieved the dream of building a safe, non toxic home. This knowledge was essential throughout the chemical free home building process.

From cigarette smoke and laundry fumes to mold and latex-based building products, my health has been detrimentally impacted by it all. Many couples face times of marital tests, but few have faced as many obstacles as my marriage has, in such a relatively short period of time. So many fully preventable trials have passed that this book can’t begin to even address 1% of them.

Even my husband, always the picture of health, was made ill from at least two moldy homes. I know how overwhelming the construction process can be, and how difficult it is to research products while living in a sick building. It is my hope that this series will help readers who are struggling to see through brain fog that there are viable options and ways they can improve their health, even if they can’t move to a healthier building. After all, I addressed fibromyalgia while living in utterly unhealthy environments.

This series of books seeks to inform and empower you to take the reins of your health. After all, no one cares more about your health than you do, as I frequently declare.

The Non-Toxic Home series of books will address various aspects of the healthy home building or remodeling process, along with various healthy living topics, including how to find the safest parcel of land, DIY non-toxic cleaning products, living with a latex allergy, sourcing non-toxic building materials, and much, much more. As you can see, a single comprehensive book would be quite the undertaking!

But rather than digress into the intended comprehensiveness of this series, let’s discover how I ended up trying to live in a tent in the middle of winter….

Chapter One

My Story Begins

My health journey encompasses decades, though I am only 40 years old as I am finishing these memoirs. In 1982, the same year I was born, my mother was diagnosed with Hepatitis B. Considered by medical professionals to be medically at high-risk of developing the symptoms of Hepatitis B, the Heptavax-B vaccine was recommended to protect me. The development, marketing, and sales of this specific product marked a shift to profit over public health per the published literature on the topic. With clinical trials having begun only four years prior, the long-term repercussions were wholly unknown. As both of my parents have since passed from cancer, I am unable to ask them if they were provided with full informed consent. Based on my extensive experience as a patient since, it is likely that they were not in fact completely apprised of the potential risks.

Naturally, my peers were not subject to this immune system disruptor, which was removed from the US market in 1989 due to safety concerns. My medical records reflect an immediate increase in pediatrician visits, which were previously limited to milestone checks for weight, growth, etc. From ear infections to severe colds, suddenly I was a baby who was regularly sick.

In 1984, my mother’s health had deteriorated to the point of hospitalization, with my paternal grandmother coming to stay with us to babysit. When I was taken to visit my beloved mother in the hospital, I was attired in stained, dirty, mismatched clothing, with tangled hair and sticky hands. Despite being informed by physicians that she would never leave the hospital again, my mother adamantly declared that no one is raising my baby girl but me. And so she did.

For seven years, she itched from head to toe as the toxic antiviral drugs destroyed her liver. Desperate to continue raising her children, in 1989 she was the first human