Poison in the Home
Six cases of organophosphate (OP) poisoning have come my way since August.
During the very hot spell many people were spraying their pets and furniture
against fleas. Most of them used one or other brand of organophosphate spray or
powder, usually unlabelled beyond the trade name.
Ros phoned me to say Trish was ill. She was unable to move from a pain in
her back and right leg. The doctor had been sent for and after a brief
examination told her the pain was due to her damaged disc. Trish very well knew
this pain was different. Moreover, she had a splitting head, white furred tongue
with metallic taste and flashes of heat that felt like fever although her
temperature was normal. She was desperately tired and wanted to sleep all the
time. The back pain and heat convinced her she had a kidney infection. I gave
her a homoeopathic remedy for the symptoms she described.
Two days later she phoned and said "I've cracked it!". She now had chest
pains so tight she could hardly breathe. Ros too had chest pains and a streaming
nose. But these pains, they realised, putting two and two together, were not due
to a worsening of Ros' angina symptoms. Trish remembered that not long before I
had been expostulating on how many sheep farmers were suffering OP poisoning
from the sheep-dip they use to protect their sheep against the life-threatening
diseases scab (scabies) and fly strike maggots.
The day before she fell ill she had sponged her dogs and cat with an
organophosphate insecticide and then gone inside to spray her carpets and
covers, all on a hot still day when the OP would have been more volatile than
usual.
OPs were first used as nerve gas poisons before being turned against
insects. In their acute effects they are anticholinesterases that block the
cholinesterase enzyme from breaking down acetylcholine at neural connections
between nerve and muscle, and between synapses in the autonomic nervous system
and in the brain. An excess of acetylcholine in the synaptic cleft produces a
maintained depolarisation of the cell membrane, with pain due to
over-contraction among the first symptoms.
In homoeopathy an infinitesimally small dose of a poison will cure the
condition brought about by a toxic dose of something with the same or similar
symptoms. The scientific explanation is that it reactivates the same biochemical
pathway.
The calabar bean plant Physostigma contains the anticholinesterase
constituent physostigmine. Trish, Ros, Trish's little boy and her 5 pets all
received Physostigma 200c, every 3 hours for 4 doses for the two victims
and one dose each for everyone else. I said they should report their experience
as a 'Suspected Adverse Reaction' (SAR) to their G.P. and the vet. The vet could
prescribe an alternative to the flea problem, 'Program' (lenfuron) taken by
mouth. It did not kill fleas but stopped them breeding. There were no known
side-effects and my cat had been free of them all summer.
Trish was still dizzy and sweating when she went next day to the vet. The
vet was horrified and filled in the yellow SAR form for the Vet. Medicines
Directorate. He now stocks a pyrethroid flea spray. The day after, Trish and Ros
were 'back on form'. Meantime I had learned Ainsworth's supplied a homoeopathic
Sheep Dip Nosode. This would be more effective than Physostigma because
organophosphates attack other enzymes in addition to cholinesterase. Trish's
household all took a dose of Sheep Dip Nosode 30c.
Sensitisation: The Allergic Response
When organophosphates block cholinesterase the condition is reversible because
in a short time the body makes more of the enzyme. But there are two problems
with a large or cumulative doses (i) several other enzymes can also be
interfered with (see 5) (ii) a person can become sensitised and unable to cope
with any more encounters. Some farmers even though they have stopped using OPs
are unable to go within a few yards of dipped sheep without an attack of
symptoms. This summer at the Royal Welsh Show a pen of dipped sheep was made to
be taken away, because although invisible to everyone else they were inducing OP
symptoms in those that were sensitised.
Something similar must have happened to Tim who was complaining to Trish of
sore throat, splitting head, pain in his left arm and tightness across his
chest. She recognised the symptoms as similar to hers the week before. Once
again OPs were incriminated: Tim was visiting a friend who had newly sprayed his
pets and furniture just as he walked in. I gave him the same Physostigma course,
confident that his good health would allow a quicker recovery than Trish and
Ros; but the next day every muscle in his legs, arms, chest and stomach ached.
He was dizzy, utterly exhausted and felt his head would explode. He had never
experienced anything like it in his life.
I asked him about an incident he had heard from his mother: when he was a
baby sitting in his pram a farmer spraying the wheat field next to their garden
had misdirected the spray so that the pram and baby Tim were covered in it. No
one found out what was in the spray but OPs were coming in then. Later as
children they used to play in an empty sheep dip, still smelling of chemicals. I
guessed he had been sensitised and that had caused the violent reaction. I gave
him Sheep Dip Nosode 30c to take every two hours. By evening he could go
for a walk. Next morning the symptoms were gone.
Alarmed that 3 people I knew were victims of OP poisoning from flea spray I
wrote to the local paper. Tim was interviewed and my telephone number given as a
helpline.
I got a call from Margaret, who had been spraying against fleas all summer,
and moreover had slept in a room with a Vapona fly strip. She had suffered for
weeks from palpitations, chest pain, hallucinations, fatigue, tearfulness and
general unwellness. Her GP had run an electrocardiogram (ECG) and taken urine
and blood tests. He was mystified. Even had he blood-tested for OP poisoning it
would have been too late because although it shows up as a depletion of
cholinesterase, the test must be made within about two days of exposure or the
body makes more enzyme. This masks all the repercussions the poison had induced
in the body's system.
Margaret's symptoms went with a course of Sheep Dip Nosode, but
returned three times: once on visiting a flea-spraying friend when it was again
corrected with the nosode and kept her free till Christmas. At the second
relapse, I thought it might have been caused by sprayed food and advised washing
or peeling fruit and vegetables. She recovered with the nosode, but to her
dismay a month later was back to square one, with return of all the symptoms.
She is an art teacher, and now I suspected there was cross-sensitisation with a
paint or solvent and advised her to see a specialist in desensitisation, once
the nosode had made her feel well enough to come out of the trough she was in,
where any extra task was too much.
Food Contamination
Organophosphates are becoming all-pervasive. Water boards are worried by
their presence. The creams and ointments which we buy often have a lanolin base.
Lanolin is extracted from sheeps' wool and some of the fat-soluble insecticide
can be captured on its way to their skin. Mothers should be sure and choose a
cream with a vegetable base for sore nipples or their baby's nappy rash. News of
spray residues makes people begin to worry about the safety of their food.
Just before Christmas Helen's pain started with an ache in the lower back
like a urinary infection, and then moved to the spine. Getting up or sitting
down she was in spasm. The driving position was awful. Lying down was the worst.
Walking eased it. She had just recovered from flu and at first thought it was a
return of flu symptoms for which I was about to give her Gelsemium and
Aconite, until she remembered a few hours before it started she had had some
grapes. She had washed them as always but they had a strange bloom and funny
feel to their skin. Her goat who eats everything refused to have any. Having
myself suffered from a gut pain that developed into pleurisy the year before
after eating a few florets of what must have been sprayed cauliflower – because
it kept its pristine whiteness after 4 weeks on the compost heap – I realised
this was not an after effect of flu. I gave her a course of Sulphur 6x as
a detoxifying or drainage remedy that seemed to fit the symptoms and had worked
for me. It brought on a severe aggravation and made her aching very much worse.
The remedy had activated a detoxification system that could not cope. Perhaps
the spray was anticholinesterase: either an OP or carbamate. I took over
Physostigma 30c to take every 4 hours x 4, followed by Sheep Dip Nosode
30c. She slept better. Next morning all the pain had gone from the lower half of
the body and had moved up. There was discomfort 'like a mass inside her ribcage'
and a tight chest. By evening it had eased and she was 'bouncing around' as she
fed the ducks.
The grapes remained as pristine as my cauliflower. Helen phoned
Environmental Health, and a Trading Standards Officer took away the two week-old
grapes for analysis. He said they were fully aware of what was happening and
getting case after case. But the Government did not want to know. We have not
heard any more.
The Battle to Get SARs Reported
Sheep farmers have found for years it well nigh impossible to get their
symptoms reported or their origin accepted. First they themselves do not
recognise their flu-like, muscular and tiredness symptoms as caused by the dip.
By the time they go to their GP they may have a spectrum of chronic symptoms
often different in each individual and that do not fit any known diagnosis. When
they have finally established for themselves the cause of their illness, their
evidence is dismissed as anecdotal, bereft of any scientific basis, or explained
away as psychosomatic by such authorities as MAFF's medical advisers or other
pillars of the medical hierarchy.
We ourselves found there were hurdles in getting the acute flea spray
reactions reported. Trish's yellow SAR form was sent to the Vet Medical
Directorate (VMD), who said that since the furnishings had been sprayed the OP
was not a vet product but a pesticide and diverted the form to the Health and
Safety Executive (HSE). The HSE said that because it did not happen at work but
in the home it was a matter for the Local Authority and sent a leaflet
explaining the permutations. Most people would have given up, but Trish and Tim
pursued it to the Local Environmental Health where they at last found a
sympathetic official who had also read my letter to the S. W. Wales Guardian,
and took it up. After about three months of all our badgering the VMD sent the
relevant forms requesting full medical details for their files.
However, these forms arrived after the House of Commons Agricultural Select
Committee had been questioning the VMD and Pesticides Safety Directorate on the
way they discharged their responsibilities as both licensing and surveillance
authority, particularly with respect to OP products about which there was much
public concern. They had found from the numerous witnesses that the SAR
surveillance scheme was far from satisfactory and lacking in openness, and
recommended that surveillance be taken from the VMD and given to an independent
body.
As a result of years of networking between victims, campaigners, committed
doctors and scientists and concerned politicians, the outcry against OP has now
reached such a pitch I foresee they will shortly be quietly withdrawn. The
multinational companies have all along blocked investigation, fearful of
litigation. The Government has been stony faced for two reasons (a) fear of
litigation because it was they that made sheep dipping and warble fly treatment
of cows mandatory, with no guidance on alternatives to what was known to be a
deadly poison (b) a desire to protect commercial interests and secrecy at all
costs so that the full toxicology of OPs, their adjuvants, solvents and
breakdown products was either unknown or hushed up.
We are left with the ruined lives of those who suffer the chronic and
delayed effects of OP poisoning, or who may one day be faced with its delayed
effects (1). The more these are investigated, the more they appear contributory
to the diseases that worry us most: ME, MS, Alzheimer's, Parkinsonism,
depression, heart disease and possibly BSE/CJD.
The Chronic and Delayed Effects of OP
Poisoning
When OPs cause acute poisoning they react with the OH group of the Serine
amino acid in the cholinesterase protein, producing muscular contractions and
sometimes impairment of concentration and memory. But organophosphates can react
with many other enzymes, depending on the individual, causing a range of acute
and intermediate effects. Some, although reversible, may develop into allergies,
cross reacting with antigens by compromising detoxification systems in the liver
such as sulphoxidation, and giving rise to food intolerances (2, 3). Others
interfere with the neurotransmitter dopamine, causing Parkinsonism; or with GABA
(gamma-amino butyric acid), an important inhibitory neurotransmitter whose under
functioning can cause cerebral ischaemia and convulsions in the acute case, and
severe anxiety in the chronic. Worst of all they can interfere with serotonin
(5HT) (4).
Serotonin in the blood stream is a humoral agent inducing vasoconstriction.
In the hypothalamus it acts as a neurotransmitter controlling heat rise (recall
Trish's dizziness and flashes of heat). Low serotonin levels in the brain are a
major cause of depression, and when combined with stress and anxiety, such a
depression may lead to suicide.
Two population studies (5, 6) found that farmers are the social group with
the highest mortality from suicide. A map of its incidence among males shows
clusters in the hills and uplands of Britain, the very areas where sheep dipping
is a part of farming life. Another cluster is in Lincolnshire where arable crop
spraying accounts for many cases of OP poisoning. OP effects on
neurotransmitters demand great circumspection by the medical profession. Dr
Robert Davies, Consultant Psychiatrist, warns against giving antidepressants to
those who have had OP exposure, where desensitisation of acetylcholine receptors
may lead to "hellish problems". (4) Anaesthetists, hospital staff and vets
should similarly be aware that if the anaesthetic contains suxamethonium, a
muscle relaxant, it potentiates the action of OPs and could prove lethal to
anyone or to an animal that has been over exposed.
OPs can also cause 'delayed effects', held to be irreversible. These may
take the form of neuropathy, either in the central nervous system (CNS) or in
the peripheral nervous system; or it may give rise to myopathy (muscle damage)
with or without neural involvement. Mark Purdey's hypothesis on OP poisoning as
a route to BSE in cows and CJD in humans proposes that these encephalopathies
are caused or contributed to by certain OPs that penetrate the CNS and
phosphorylate the normal PrP protein in the brain inducing a change in the
molecular conformation (7, 8). It is this change in enzyme shape that is thought
to turn the protease into the infective prion, which is then no longer
degradable and persists in a degenerative attack on brain tissue (9).
In the peripheries there may be a myopathy resembling ME (myalgic
encephalitis), where interference with mitochondrial function (10) now explains
the utter exhaustion of ME suffers who are unable to synthesise sufficient ATP
for the body's energy needs. There may be a neuropathy usually with lower limb
paralysis (11) or a neuropathy identifiable as MS (multiple sclerosis), where
attack on myelin nerve sheaths again leads to paralysis, this time accompanied
by cramping pains. MS is beginning to appear among farmers, and Professor Behan
I understand has 4 out of 10 OP patients who contracted it.
I stumbled on my sixth case when in conversation with a client I made a
passing reference to OPs. In a flash she realised that OP poisoning was the
reason why her relative X was in a wheelchair. Later X phoned me up. Ten years
ago at 28 years of age, a fit man, he had been working on a big arable farm in
Lincolnshire as a tractor driver spraying crops. The farmer would use 6 or 7
chemicals in a cocktail. There were no carbon filters in the cab in those days,
or rules about water being available for washing. The air conditioner blew the
spray back into the cab. He had a tooth abscess followed by flu, then suddenly
lost the use of his arms and legs. The power in his arms returned but for the
last 6 years he has been in a wheelchair. He gets very tired and is prone to
infections. His condition was given all sorts of names, such as 'hysterical
paralysis', and finally decided to be viral. Early on he had asked if it could
have been caused by chemicals. and told "oh, no".
He himself believed it was ME but the Cardiff research unit on ME could not
confirm it. He has no disability pension for want of proof of what is wrong, and
feels in limbo, bereft of the recognition a diagnosis would have brought. I told
him he was not alone. There were thousands of fellow sufferers, and if he joined
the OP group in Green Network (2) he would find them and be able to help
himself. He should eat organically grown foods (which he does) and contact Dr
Sarah Myhill who specialises in desensitisation, and would know who to refer him
to, for his condition to be diagnosed.
Coping and Preventing
Organophosphate insecticides replaced the organo-chlorines which accumulate
in body fat because it was believed OPs were rapidly detoxified. Probably in
most cases the metabolism's efficient detoxification systems will degrade
everything safely. But our environment is becoming burdened with pollutants and
our diets in many cases do not give us the minerals and vitamins we need to run
the cellular pumps and liver and kidney detoxifying mechanisms. Moreover OPs
attack where there has been a depressed immune system (Helen, X) or some
specific vulnerable point (Trish, Ros, Tim).
Homoeopathic Physostigma or Sheep Dip Nosode can resolve an
acute poisoning, but in my experience Sheep Dip Nosode may aggravate a
'delayed' condition. In these cases mineral and vitamin supplements are required
to strengthen metabolism and tissue functions, particularly selenium, magnesium,
zinc, the B vitamins and E and C.
Mercury removal from teeth fillings may be important to prevent a drain on
selenium. An organic food diet and avoidance of drugs is essential, because the
liver cannot cope with any more overload. For the rest of us we can help protect
ourselves from a toxic environment by similar measures, and above all by
demanding a benign system of agriculture and an economy and infrastructure that
does not depend on pouring pollutants into the atmosphere, rivers and seas.
References
Dr Fullerton is a clinical research scientist in Wales, specialising in trace elements and homoeopathy.