interesting. good luck! marilyn

it gets worse, i am also making connections with the high cancer areas and the areas that have naturally occurring uranium and it's decay products and i'm right in the middle of it here in southern maryland :( crazy thing is, i feel the CDC knows about this connection yet don't inform the public!

Hi Raindance you are in Maryland? That's where Dr. Shoemaker, MD is. He is a mover and shaker and I'll bet he would be interested in what you are doing. His website is www.chronicneurotoxins.com and I think you are right we are exposed to some alful toxin and bang we get FM. I think there is a link between toxin exposure and biotoxin disease. I believe that I was exposed to nickel in my body and it caused mold to grow in my body hense a biotoxin disease. Nickel carbonyl is a known carcinogen and why they would put it in a woman who has an 82% chance of getting breast cancer I'll never know. Anyway I'm also highly allergic to nickel. I support your research.

yes, southern maryland, st. mary's county - i'll check out that web-site, thank you. my diagnosis, aside from FM, was toxic heavy metal exposure. after John Swett with Radon Abatement Services fixed our house, he told me to have my well checked (very glad he told me to do that - i was drinking eight glasses of water a day from it!!!!). i contacted my doctor who sent a list of toxins to the Health Department (that made the tests free!) our well water has radon, uranium, thorium, thallium, arsenic, nickel, lead and a small amount of mercury! i am curious, why would they put nickel carbonyl in you? have you considered a heavy metal detox? it helped me a lot but you have to have someone close to you around for three months while you go through it to make sure you eat and drink like you should. i didn't and ended up partially re-poisoning myself, yuck :-( but i am still better than i was before!

Actually raindance I am working with a doctor out of Atlanta who has worked with Dr. Shoemaker. She is an MD and a Naturopath and she knows breasts like no other doctor as she has treated hundreds of women who have had problems with their implants. Guess what? Platium can be found in silicone breast implants and black mold. I am being treated for a biotoxin disease which included getting rid of heavy metals from your body. My first month was hell but I'm slowing climbing out of my hole. Stainless steel is the metal they put in me and it's 13% nickel and of that 13% 3% is nickel carbonyl. Go figure.

wow, 24 years ago, i got hit by a drunk driver and they put steel rods in me, a year later i had them take them out or i was gonna go bye-byes in a bad way, so they took them out! bet you that was some of my nickel poisoning! thanks for the info, hope you are doing well now?! would you be up to conducting a home radon test? i would love to have some out-of state info (already know most of PA and sections of DE are VERY bad) and it may end up helping you. as radon gas dissipates (in 3.8 days) it becomes polonium 210 and bismuth 214 which never go away and continue to emit radiation forever, damaging your cells from the inside out!

My husband and I did one awhile back and it was okay upstairs and downstairs. Does the radon level change?

Yes, radon fluctuates daily. some people have had their home tested for radon for a real estate transaction and unfortunately, the realtor is allowed to tell them it is "negative" if the results came in at 3.9pc or less. as your home is heated, it draws the cold air from the ground - which increases your radon levels. you should test again. we purchased an electronic radon detector on line for $115 and watch our levels daily (we have also loaned it to several friends who found radon in their home with it so it has more than paid for itself!). with mitigation, our levels are still higher than i would prefer - averaging about 2.6pc (outdoor averages between 0.5pc and 1.5pc just about everywhere in the world), we are considering moving and leaving this incredible $65,000 inground pool that we just put in. this past summer i only used it about a dozen times cause i was to sick from the heavy metal poisoning from digging up the source of our radon! do you remember what your levels were when you tested?

No I don't but my husband use to be an inspector - very short lived because he couldn't live with himself if he didn't catch something he should have so we has a bunch of the tests and did it at the time. I know the downstairs was worse than the upstairs but I think that is normal. Do you check for mold? Mold is a huge problems in Maryland and pfiesteria. Did you here about the pfiesteria outbreak?

yes, we tested for mold. we bought this fixer upper in 2001 and i was sick about six months later. first thing we checked for was mold...so a new roof, new plumbing, new floors, new walls, new siding and a half gutted basement, we have gotten almost all of it. waiting for an estimate from the drywall guy to finish gutting the basement... getting rid of the mold helped but the main problem has been exposure to what is creating the radon. our radon was just as bad in our daughter's room over the crawl space as it was in the basement on the other side of the house. it really depends on how much uranium & decay of uranium is in the ground in relation to your home. there is more under our daughter's room :( i have heard about pfiesteria but not sure i know about an outbreak that you mentioned, please tell...

We live in Upstate New York in an 8 year old Modular without a basement, only a cement pad. The previous owner put fill in that came from wherever his town job got it from around here. Do you think I should get a radon test kit? Our well had really good water for about a year, but now it has a really high iron content and who knows what else>

So sorry, I forgot, we live in Watkins Glen.

Yes! for about $16 you can get a home radon test kit from a hardware store (we get ours from Lowes) or you can buy them on line for about $12. it really doesn't matter if you have a basement or a slab, if you have uranium under your home (which the east coast has got it BIG time) you will end up with radon gas in your home AND possibly in your well water too. the standard well test only checks for bacteria and sometimes lead, so when people say their well was tested and it's fine, they don't realize that you have to request to specifically test for radon (it is inert, which means it stays in water). a lot of fill dirt, especially if orange in color, has uranium and it's decay products (like radium and thorium) in it. we got our well tested for free because we had our doctor fax the request to the Health Department to check for radon, uranium, thorium, thallium, nickel, lead, arsenic (which all are present in our water, yuck!) and a few other compounds i can't recall at the moment. Being exposed to high levels of radon made me sick, however, it was coming in contact with the source of it (uranium, thorium, thallium) in our yard that really got us ill. our heavy metal toxins in our yard are at surface level! we had been picking up these random sandstone looking rocks in our yard and putting them in our flower bed to control weeds and they were poisoning us everytime we walked by! you can see some of our story on thebaynet.com and do a site search for "uranium" two of the stories that come up are about our yard. i have been too ill to have them come back for a follow-up, maybe i should muster up the strength to finally have them come back.

We live about 22-25 miles from a nuclear plant. No clue if this has anything to do with it or not but I can tell you there is a very high cancer rate in our area. There are 15-20 people that have died of cancer in the last year that either we know, or someone that lives in our town or general area that has never smoked a day in their lives. The town we live in has 1700 people. I have always thought that the nuclear plant was not healthy to live near.
Now believe me, i have no clue what goes on at a nuclear plant or what types if fumes or odor or vapor or whatever comes from there.
Just wondered if this could have something to do with it also.

actually the nuclear power plant has less radiation than your yard! Radon Gas is the second leading cause of lung cancer and kills between 25,000 and 30,000 people a year that made the connection to the radon (so how many more had lung cancer and didn't know to look for radon?? my husbands ex's brother was just diagnosed with lung cancer and never smoked a day in his life but they refuse to check for radon because i am the one suggesting it!) we live in a county that has high cancer rates for several kinds of cancer (lung, breast & prostate are really bad here, amongst others). a big problem is that people have not made the connection with the fact that if you have radon, you have uranium in your yard! you need to know how deep it is to make sure you are not disturbing it when you plant, cut grass, dig ponds/pools, etc... your first step is to do a simple Home Radon Test, it's cheap, $16 and that includes the lab fee! two days to leave a charcoal tray out then send it in and a few weeks later they send you the results. pay an extra $10 and they will let you access it on the internet within about a week. we need to bring about real awareness of radon because the EPA won't admit that it is much worse than they lead you to believe. i have read their entire report on "The Risks of Radon in the Home" and they admit that if radon got into your blood, it would involve all your major organs and body functions. well, when you breathe air, your lungs provide oxygen to your blood - if there is radon in the air, then it is in your blood, duh. there is a lot of research going on regarding the possible connection of Radon Gas and MS. They have already connected it to different ailments of the brain. this is serious stuff and by being able to identify having radon in your home, getting it mitigated (about $900 for a slab and about $2,000 for a crawl space) and making sure you are not disturbing the land that has the source in it is the difference of life and death, literally. Please test your home, have everyone you know test, it could save someone you know (that is a big return on $16!). by the way, cute kids! ours are 20, 15, 14, 12 and surprise, 3 - keeps me busy...