On Being Dragged Kicking & Screaming...

I was one of many in my class who were more than just a little bit reluctant to experiment with blogs and YouTubes.  It took me a while to even put my name on my blog.  Figuratively speaking, we were all dragged kicking, and not so silently screaming, into having a personal presence on the Internet beyond that of email and FaceBook.  I hate to have to admit this, but I need to give credit where credit is due.  My Community Social Work teacher was right about using the Internet to do community advocacy social work.

A lot of the concerns that I had had to do with not wanting to be so public in my writing.  It is not my kind of thing to do, yet I have found that I can be just as opinionated as the next person, with such a platform as a blog.  I also know now that, by and large, there is so much out there on the web now that one person's contribution can easily escape notice in an Internet that is astronomically vast.  Hence, why worry about being read and critiqued? What I have found is few people beyond my friends and family barely notice, and I recently discovered that I even have family who are too busy reading something else!  You know who you are, if you ever get to reading this...

Yet, I have stumbled into the real reason for doing this, and that is the Internet is a valuable tool for community activism, even on a small scale such as mine.  If not for the Community Social Work class assignments,  I would not have had any way to help a friend, and through the blogs and a video, to help her to help others.  In researching my information, I have become keenly aware of how much can be presented on the Internet that would never make it into the mainstream media.  An individual can say what a newspaper or television station would hesitate to publish because of advertising concerns.  I understand on a personal level now why a free Internet is vital to an exchange of information, at a time when schools of higher education are being downsized and the proper public relations spin is put on the news by governments and corporations. 

The semester is coming to an end, and this is the last of the ten blogs that I am required to do for my class.  However it felt like being thrown into the water in the deep end during this class, I did learn to keep my head above water and even make it to the side of the Internet pool.  I will be using this blog again.  It won't be that regular, but now and again I might have something that I consider worth the effort to say.  No one really needs to listen to me, but at least if I have something worth saying, in my personal opinion, then on the Internet, somewhere, somehow, someone may need that input and find it useful one day. 

 But DANG!  This has been a lot of work!

Heavy Metal Florists: Jill's Journey

       Since the early 1990's, florists in the United States have been chronically exposed to contaminated flowers imported from other countries with little to no pesticide regulations, as well as from industry workplace practices.  Many pesticides and fungicides contain heavy metals, such as mercury, arsenic, cadmium, lead and silver. Chronic exposure to heavy metals from pesticides and fungicides can result in neurological and organ damage. A wide range of symptoms, such as vertigo, tremors, metal taste, excess salivation, memory loss, and chronic fatigue, defy ordinary diagnosis because doctors are not trained to consider heavy metal toxicity as a possibility.  Florists with many years of experience, dating especially from the nineties, are often misdiagnosed and never know that their problems are due to high levels of heavy metals in their bodies. 

A group of florists in Northern California have tested positive for very high levels of exposure to heavy metals. The story of one of those florists was previously covered in this blog.  This is a continuation of that story.  The link below is to a YouTube video of Jill describing her experiences over the last 6-7 years:

Heavy Metal Florists: Jill's Journey

Since that blog, the union representing the grocery workers in their Northern California area has published an article in the hopes of alerting other florists to possible heavy metal exposure.

The memory loss suffered by the original group of seven long-time florists, all floral managers, is being studied by a researcher at the University of San Francisco.  The memory loss sustained is permanent, but it may be possible to retrain other parts of their brains to compensate.  There is also organ damage, especially to the kidneys and to the adrenal glands.  Depending on the susceptibility of the individual, damage to the kidneys can lead to complete kidney failure, and has resulted in the death of an eighth florist who was in the process of testing when he died.  Damage to the adrenal glands leads to extreme chronic fatigue as well as immunological problems.  The list of possible symptoms is not short, as the entire body is permanently affected by chronic heavy metal poisoning.  A single therapy exists to try to remove heavy metals from the body, which is often not covered by ordinary insurance or Medicare.  Families and individuals struggle to pay for the therapy that is required, as it is considered not mainstream therapy.  It is called chelation therapy, and it is hard on the body and on the person.

Part of Jill's journey was to fight to obtain disability status from the Social Security Administration.  After a legal battle in the courts, disability status was granted retroactively to Jill, setting a precedent for anyone else who applies with similar problems and diagnosis.  What took Jill three years to accomplish now takes three months for others.

If you know of a friend or family member who is a florist or has been one in the past, please consider letting them know that they could be at risk.  If they are experiencing symptoms such as described in this blog, have them contact Jill at heavymetalflorist2@gmail.com