News Release

October 1, 1998

ENVIRONMENTAL WELLNESS IS THE BIRTHRIGHT, HEALTH RIGHT AND HUMAN RIGHT OF EVERY CANADIAN

October 1 Marks the First Day of National Environmental Illness Awareness Month 

Ottawa- M.P. Mac Harb of Ottawa Center will rise today, during Question Period, to advise his peers that he has registered a Private Member's Motion and to invite them to join him in recognizing that Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) and Fibromyalgia (FM) are illnesses which have the capacity to disable the men, women and children who are affected. There are an estimated 4.5 million (15%) Canadians that already suffer from some degree of MCS. 

Why an Environmental Illness Awareness Month? The Federal Ministers of Health have, for far too many years been telling Canadians that these are a complex group of conditions and that their ministry is concerned about the health and well-being of persons affected with ME/CFS, FM and MCS, yet the MOH does not make the specialized, low cost treatments that these patients require available to them, says Environmental Illness Society of Canada (EISC) spokesperson, President Judith Spence. 

In the United States, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) sponsors Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) accredited courses in Environmental Medicine. Interest in Environmental Medicine is growing because doctors are finding that more and more of their patients are succumbing to symptoms and effects that just don't fit the conventional paradigm. They want to know why. They also want to know what they can do to alter the course of the illness and how to give their patients relief from the pain and suffering that is associated with MCS, ME/CFS and FM.  Doctors are finding answers through the research and in the treatments of Environmental Medicine a field that has been steadily growing for the past forty years. There is no equivalent opportunity for doctors to study Environmental Medicine here in Canada and being uninformed, they cannot teach their patients. The onus of educating the public falls onto the national educational stakeholder organizations such as the EISC. There are about 1,200 Environmental Medicine physicians in the US while there are only 25 doctors specializing in the field in Canada.  Canadian doctors interested in taking the courses must go down to the United States to study and the cost of doing so is prohibitive for most. 

The EISC is in the final stages of development of an informative booklet written specifically for Canadian physicians who are ill equipped to handle patients with these illnesses.  Physicians do not study about ME/CFS-MCS-FM in medical school and so, front line physicians are often at a loss when trying to make sense of the myriad of symptoms patients present to them. 

The Environmental Illness Desk Reference has been developed to meet those needs of the physician. Once funding is secured, the EI Society will be sending the booklets to every Family Medicine physician, Pediatrician and Emergentologist in the Ottawa area, as part of a test pilot.  The ultimate goal, says the EISC, is to see that every front line physician in Canada has a copy of our 28 page medical booklet by the year 2000. 

The Environmental Illness Society of Canada is a national educational charity whose mission is to educate the public about the signs and symptoms of EI; to provide inform them about how to prevent it and, to provide support to Canadians already affected. The Society delivers on-going educational programs such as the: National Child Day EI Art and Essay Contest, Options: Alternatives  to Pesticides Program, The Environment-Health Connection: An Information and Activity Resource for Educators. During the Ice Storm of '98 the EISC worked with Red Cross officials and the Ottawa-Careleton Emergency Services to set up a first ever, environmentally safe emergency shelter for persons with MCS-ME/CFS-FM.