When the Melinda Ballard story hit the Headline of USA Today, I bought 20 copies and gave them to top CFS researchers. NOW do you believe me about the mold I told you about at my high school that was making me sick? and that I told doctors about AS I was being asked to start this new syndrome called CFS? That was 25 years ago. Dr Ritchie Shoemaker was the only one who responded. --------------------------------------------------------- Truckee, California. Coincident with, and reported as part of an outbreak of CFS in northern Nevada and Califor-nia [13, 17, 24], nine of 10 high school teachers who used a single, small, poorly ventilated conference room became ill sequentially. All nine teachers required a leave of absence, and two retired. Eight teachers remain ill 5 years after the onset of the outbreak. The one unaffected teacher spent less time than the others in the conference room, often doing his work outdoors. The conference room was one of four rooms serviced by an all-water heating system installed in 1985. It functioned by using variable air flow over a coil filled with hot water. The fresh-airv ents were sealed with no other sourceo f fresh air available. There were no functioning windows or air con-ditioning. A spirit duplicator and two coffee machines were in the room. The onset of illness was generally sudden, evolving over 1 month, and fatigue was the predominant symptom. Headaches, myalgias, and dyspnea were other common com-plaints. Photophobia was often noted, with difficulty keeping the eyes open even in darkness. Many individuals experi-enced recurrent sinusitis. The prevalence of severe fatigue is noted in figure 1. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8148452 Clin Infect Dis. 1994 Jan;18 Suppl 1:S43-8. Concurrent sick building syndrome and chronic fatigue syndrome: epidemic neuromyasthenia revisited. Chester AC, Levine PH. Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C. Sick building syndrome (SBS) is usually characterized by upper respiratory complaints, headache, and mild fatigue. Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is an illness with defined criteria including extreme fatigue, sore throat, headache, and neurological symptoms. We investigated three apparent outbreaks of SBS and observed another more serious illness (or illnesses), characterized predominantly by severe fatigue, that was noted by 9 (90%) of the 10 teachers who frequently used a single conference room at a high school in Truckee, California; 5 (23%) of the 22 responding teachers in the J wing of a high school in Elk Grove, California; and 9 (10%) of the 93 responding workers from an office building in Washington, D.C. In those individuals with severe fatigue, symptoms of mucous membrane irritation that are characteristic of SBS were noted but also noted were neurological complaints not typical of SBS but quite characteristic of CFS. We conclude that CFS is often associated with SBS. PMID: 8148452 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 13:17:37 +0000
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