From toxic@globallink.netTue Apr 16 20:55:40 1996 Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 19:51:51 -0500 Status: ORSr John R Bollman Sr 417 Ralph St. White Settlement TX 76108 (817) 246-4386 email toxic@globallink.net RE: Summary of Injury Circumstances Treatments and Physicians Dear Sir: John is a white male, 42 years old. He is a one (1) pack a day smoker and is presently trying to quit. He is not a drinker with no preexisting medical problems prior to injury. He is a high school graduate, married with three (3) adult children and two (2) young children. In December of 1994, United Pump Supply, 10931 Dennis Road, Dallas TX, began installing electronic, underground storage tank and line leak detection equipment. John was assigned to install and service this equipment. The course of this work required him to be below ground in confined spaces for four (4) to six (6) hours per day, five days a week, for eight (8) months. Beginning about March 1995, John's health was getting worse. The first signs were flu-like symptoms that would not go away. Within a short period of time, he began getting headaches, not sleeping and tingling in his hands and feet. He stayed home from work for several days in July of 1995. During this time, John was so weak he could barely get out of bed. Our insurance carrier referred him to a Basil Bernstein, MD to treat his "flu." Dr. Bernstein found some kind of sinus infection and upper respiratory problems. He prescribed antibiotics and steroid inhalers. He also found signs of depression and prescribe Zoloft. He referred John to a pulmonary specialist, Abadat Ali. He was seen on two (2) separate occasions, by Doctor Ali. He performed pulmonary function tests and found that John had rhinitis and early signs of emphysema. After visiting with John about his profession and not being able to diagnose the cause of all his problems, he (Doctor Bernstein) suggested John see a toxicologist. Through Khemtrec (Hazardous and Toxic Specialists), we were given the name of a Doctor Jeffrey Levin. He is employed by the State of Texas as an environmental specialist in Tyler TX. John contacted Doctor Levin, he said the only person in North Texas that knew anything about this was Doctor Thomas Kurt MD; MPH (Professor of Toxicology at St. Paul's Medical Facility). Doctor Kurt agreed to see John through the emergency room of St. Paul's since he does not have a doctor's office. John was seen on August 21, 1995, and again on September 14, 1995. His course of treatment involved extensive blood work to rule out any underlying medical problems that would cause these symptoms. After studying these results, he found MTBE's (Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether) showing in the blood. His conclusions were as follows: 1. Rinitis with mild sinusitis associated with his workplace inhalation of the epoxy resins. 2. Toxic encephalopathy secondary to workplace inhalation of gasoline and contained hydrocarbon exposures. 3. Periphal neuropathy of a toxic nature of his upper extremities related to his inhalation and percutaneous exposure to gasoline and its related components, especially n-hexane and hexacarbons. He prescribed Valerian and Melatonin along with the Zoloft and Bactrim-DS/Septra DS/Sulfamethoxazole. He then referred John to Paul Michaelson, MD for consultation and neuropsychologic testing to rule out any prior spinal or back injury Doctor Kurt also referred John to Doctor James Hom PhD, at the Neuropsychology Center, for neuropsychologic testing concerning his memory loss and cognitive problems. The results for these are to lengthy to describe and are available upon request. Shortly after testing was completed, Doctor Kurt contacted United Pump to assist them in the proper handling of these hazardous chemicals and advise them of OSHA required protective gear to prevent this from recurring to other United Pump employees. Due to the amount of time involved assisting United Pump with these procedures, Workers Compensation Fund ruled that Doctor Kurts time advising United Pump on safe practices was not within TWC guidelines of treatment for injured therefore, refused payment only for the extra services. As a result, Doctor Kurt wrote a letter to John advising that his next appointment was postponed until this matter could be resolved. Therefore, as of October 15, 1995, John's treatment ceased. As of October 1995, John had been off work drawing Worker's Compensation Disability. Doctor Kurt allowed John to return to work on limited, unexposed, clerical duty. Doctor Hom advised John returning to work only under the following conditions: 1. The patients return to work, once he is medically cleared, should be accomplished slowly, in light of his neuropsychological status. He should start on a part-time basis to be sure that he can handle the requirements, and then gradually increase his time on the job. Suggestions that Doctor Hom has already made should be incorporated into his work environment so that he can function at his bests. 2. He must minimize toxic exposures. If this cannot be accomplished, then a change of job may become necessary. United Pump advised John that the only available position inside was as Service Manager. They also stated that they would assist John in any way during his recovery. At first John's duties involved only simple paperwork. Within a short period of time (less than 1 month), John was responsible for: maintaining approximately fifty (50) vehicles, handling all service-related problems and the dispatching of all services personnel, customer relations, payroll for service employees, management decisions regarding hiring and firing of service personnel. He worked no less that eight (8) hour days often bringing work home after hours to "keep up and also on weekends. At this time, Johns symptoms became more severe. Sleeping became more difficult, irritability and nervousness increased, entire personality changed, became very withdrawn. Symptoms other than "flu" accelerated. On January 12, 1996, John was terminated with no grounds expressed, just an apology, and a ride home. They promised to give John a good recommendation if he did not sue. One (1) to two (2) weeks prior to the termination, Karen Myer with TWC demanded that John locate another doctor or one would be assigned. John inquired about continuing with Doctor Kurt and she advised that Doctor Kurt was no longer an option. During last week of John's employment and following his termination, he and his wife got out the Yellow Pages and began calling referral services. Due to the nature of his injury, doctors are few and far between who know how to treat or are even interested in getting involved. We contacted, as a last resort, the Tarrant County Medical Society to suggest someone. They suggested Darryl Steele MD. John saw him four (4) times over a one and a half (1 1/2) week period. At the end of this time, he advised he had in inoperable brain tumor and was leaving his practice to check in to a clinic in Vidor TX. We requested a referral and were told that was our problem. After contacting the TWCC at Austin TX, the payment dispute with Doctor Kurt was resolved. He resumed seeing John on a regular basis about January 15, 1996. Doctor Kurt referred John back to Doctor Michaelson for evaluation of improvement. Doctor Kurt set an appointment for John with Doctor Virgil Cox, psychiatrist in private practice, for medication regulation and sleep disturbances. After bi-weekly appointments for three (3) months, and an assortment of medication trials/failures to successfully control depression and sleep disturbances, Doctor Cox decided John needs further medical studies through Doctor Michaelson for more involved testing of John's brain for medical, not psychiatric studies. Doctor Kurt set appointments with Doctor Cox on Tuesday, April 16, and Doctor Michaelson on Wednesday, April 17. The doctors will discuss the evaluation and the next course of treatment. >From The Desk Of John Bollman 417 Ralph St. Whitesettlement,Tx. 76108 April 16, 1996 Talk with John Bolman He worked installing pressure monitors on underground gasoline storage tanks for Texaco. He had a long history of previously working with gasoline with no problems. I think this indicates that n-hexane is not his problem. He definitely was working with epoxy resin. Dr. Kurt is a well known academic toxicologist, he admits he is guessing about n-hexane. He would have expected Bolman to improve within 6 months, but now it is over 12 and he is still ill. He gets almost no sleep, 3 or 4 hours per week. Also gets heart pounding and palpitations, especially at night and on cloudy moist days. He lives near an air base. They did find some MTBE in his blood while he was working, apparently it went away later. He finds that antihistamines do not help his sinusitis or breathing. Originally had eyes bleeding. Now has chronic headache, migraine medicine does not help. He gets rash on stomach and arms. Dr. Kurt says he has a good case for legal suit. RT.663 AND SWAMP PIKE GILBERTSVILLE, PA, 19525 April 6, 1995 Dr. Peter Joseph 539 Beverly Blvd. Upper Darby, PA, 19082 Dear Dr. Joseph: I am writing to clarify the history of my health problems which have been caused by MTBE in gasoline. I hope that you can publicize this letter so as to convince our government officials to ban the use of MTBE in gasoline. Because I own my own auto repair business, I have to work around the gasoline fumes most of the day. I can say this has already almost ruined my life! I am 35 years old and have generally been in good health until recently. My problems started during the winter of 1993-94, around the time that MTBE was again put into our gas at the 15% level. I got bronchitis twice during that period, and each time my doctor treated me with antibiotics. He also gave me an EKG exam which was normal. During the spring, summer, and fall of 1994 when MTBE was not used as an oxygenate I felt just about normal. In fact, I often went to my gym and did strenous Martial Arts aerobic exercises with no problem. However, again this winter when MTBE came back I got sick again. I had many symptoms including a constant cough that would not stop. I think I got some kind of nasal infection which I treated myself using over-the-counter inhalers. I would get headaches whenever I had to work in my auto repair garage. I would also be overcome with a kind of tired, lethargic feeling that I never had before and would often have to lie down to rest during the day. As the winter wore on, my symptoms began to include a severe burning pain in the sinuses, and also alot of mucous in the throat. This mucous was clear or white, not yellow, and my doctor tells me that I do not have an infection. Because I had been so sick I tried to catch up on work by working on saturdays and sundays; this has just made my condition much worse. On Sunday, March 26, while I was working in the shop I suddenly had the feeling that I could not breath! This was extremely scary and I made an appointment to see my doctor. He says I do not have an infection but do have an allergy to something. I find this very strange because I never had any allergies to anything before in my life. He gave me Seldane to take, which has helped a little but has not really cured my problems. To deal with this condition, I have changed the way I work so as to minimize my exposure to car exhaust. Previously I had done auto emissions tests with the cars in my garage but with the exhaust gases vented to the outside. Now I do them with the entire car outside of the shop. However, I still find that when I need to change a gas tank on a car, I feel very sick. I still have pain in my chest and sometimes find myself wheezing when talking. I have noticed that, aside from problems working in my shop, I feel noticably worse on days when the weather is overcast and still. I also feel worse in the evenings. I am now very sensitive to cigarette smoke, which did not use to bother me at all. I can't say too strongly how much I hate this MTBE or RFG gasoline or whatever it is that is making me sick. I think it is terrible that the government is forcing us to use this stuff, and even claiming that it is good for our health! I really support your efforts to get it banned and will try to help you in whatever way I can. In particular, you have my permission to get my medical records so as to impress on the government authorities just how sick this stuff has made me. Sincerely, Joseph Cava JC/pmj 147 HAMBURG TURNPIKE BLOOMINGDALE,NJ,07403 August 7, 1995 Dr. Peter Joseph 539 Beverly Blvd. Upper Darby, PA, 19082 Dear Dr. Joseph: I am writing to put on the record just how much the oxygenated and reformulated gasoline has ruined my life, as well as my wife's. I hope you can publicize this letter so that the government knows just how much sickness and misery they are creating with this MTBE in gasoline. I am 45 years old and my wife is 38 years old. I have been running my own gas station since 1989 and have been working around gas stations for most of my adult life with no unusual problems. However, in October of 1992 I began to get these symptoms while working at the station: breathing problems, chills, headaches, dizziness. I also began to feel disturbing mental problems like losing my memory and ability to concentrate on what I was doing. Besides all of these specific problems, I just felt sick all over, I call it feeling like snot. Around that time I got a lot of gas in my bowels. The doctor said I had an intestinal virus but he did not do any tests to prove it. The thing is, all of these problems cleared up after April of 1993. However, I did have a bad reaction to a bee sting that summer and saw an allergy doctor. He tested me for allergies and said that bee sting was the only thing I was allergic to. It seems to me that this is important because it means that my other problems are not due to allergies. He also said I had tinea versicolor, which means a changed color in the skin. There was one problem in the summer of 1993 in which both my gas and water pipes broke and I could taste the gas in the water. The line that broke had the "PLUS" grade of gas, which has increased octane and I think may contain some MTBE even in the summertime. My wife and I still felt a little bad while working in the station but not nearly as bad as during the winter. In October of 1993, just when MTBE came back into all of the gas, I again felt sick. I felt nauseous in the stomach and had a hard time breathing, sort of like emphysema. I went to Dr. Sugar who said I had bronchitis from an allergy to something, but he did not know what I was allergic too. He told me to take Benadryl, but frankly that did not really help very much. I would wake up every morning with flem in my throat. I really felt sick as a dog the whole winter; I just don't know how else to say it. Even though he did not test me for any bacterial infection, the doctor gave me a shot of penicillin; that also did no good at all. Up until the fall of 1993, I had no idea that MTBE was causing my problems. The doctors never said anything about it and I really thought that we were all going crazy. However, at that time I heard about the Oxybuster organization and they explained that MTBE was making everyone sick. At last, here was the explanation for all of these strange problems. Without going into all the details, the main point is that when MTBE is in the gas I and everyone else who works at the station gets sick. My wife who used to work making change now is so sick that she can not work in the station at all. She has had a skin rash each and every time that MTBE came into the gasoline. At first her doctor said she had skin cancer, then later he changed his mind and said eczema, then later said she has lymphatic cancer. Then they said she does not have cancer, then they tested for AIDS and Lyme disease, both of which were negative. As things stand now, the doctors do not have any idea what is wrong with her. She has been sick more often than not for the past two years. Whenever she starts to feel better and comes into the station she gets worse. She also gets sick while riding in the car sometimes. Now my symptoms haunt me even when I am not at the station, especially in bed at night. I have a lot of trouble sleeping and have not slept at all for the past 5 days. I can feel my heart pounding and I swear that it sometimes skips a beat. As you can imagine, this is rather scary. Also my ears ring a lot, even when I am at home. I just recently tried the air filtering machines that you suggested for my bedroom. I can say they have made a major improvement for me. This obviously means that what is making me sick is what is in the air. I have 5 employees who work for me in the station, and all 5 of them are sick from the gas. There was one young guy who always seemed to be drunk; he would make stupid mistakes like forgetting to tell me things that he should have told me. I accused him of drinking on the job and he denied it. I finally got so fed up I fired him. I have since regretted that because now I know how MTBE can make a person drunk. Besides, I never did find any liquor bottles around the station, so he was probably telling the truth. I have to wonder now many accidents on our roads are now caused by people who are drunk, not from alcohol but from MTBE. This is really a crazy situation that the government is creating, isn't it? The one bright spot in my life is when I get to go to our cottage in the middle of rural Pennsylvania. As you know, they do not have MTBE there because the Pennsylvania government canceled it. When my wife and I are there we feel great! The contrast with living there and in New Jersey is like night and day. We go there fairly often, about once every other weekend, so I can say definitely that we feel much better there. Whenever we can we fill up our car with Pennsylvania gas because we feel better when driving with that in the car. I have tried writing letters to all sorts of government officials and get only junk answers. It seems that they do not want to listen to ordinary people like me, even when we can prove that it is the gas that is making us sick. I hope that you can somehow convince them that this is a terrible mistake. Whatever good they think they are doing is definitely overshadowed by all of the sickness in people like me and my employees. I am seriously considering selling my business. If all of the gas pumpers and service mechanics are forced out of the business, who will fix the cars of the big shots that make us use this stuff? Why don't you ask them that? As I said, I hope you can use this letter to convince the government to take MTBE out of gasoline. If there is anything else I can do to help you, I hope you will ask me. Sincerely, Richard Billets Telephone 201-492-9387 2572 Atlantic Ave. Bensalem, PA, 19020 March 5, 1995 Dr. Peter Joseph 539 Beverly Blvd. Upper Darby, PA, 19082 Dear Dr. Joseph: I am writing to clarify my history of severe health effects created by the use of MTBE in gasoline. I urge you to send copies of this letter to all public officials who may have the power to ban this substance. My problems started in the Winter of 1992-93, which was when MTBE was first put into our gas. I developed symptoms of nasal drip and breathing problems. My doctor diagnosed bronchitis and treated me with steroids and antibiotics. That medicine had only a minor affect, and my symptoms continued all winter and cleared up in early spring soon after MTBE was removed from the gasoline. I do have some pollen allergies which normally bother me in the spring, but have never required such powerful medicines to treat them before. I had very few symptoms all through the spring, summer, and fall of 1993. However, again in the winter of 1993 my nasal drip and breathing problems returned, this time worse. My doctor again gave me steroids and said I had seasonal allergic rhinitis. Again the medicine was only partially helpful and again the symptoms cleared up in the spring. This winter, in November 1994, just when MTBE again came back into the gas, my airway problems returned. Now they are really worse than ever! I have burning in my chest, especially on certain bad, cloudy days. I was extremely interested to hear about your idea that MTBE can cause my problems and that the cloudy weather will make them worse. I can definitely say that on dark, cloudy, days my airway/breathing problems get much worse. No doctor has ever offered a reasonable explanation for that effect, and I am convinced that you are right, that MTBE created air pollution is making me sick. I emphasize that my current condition is really getting horrible. I have been so sick so much that I have been unable to work at my usual awning repair business. This has led to severe financial and other family problems. At the rate things are going, I am afraid that I might actually die! Please, please try to get the government people to understand that this is a serious problem and that MTBE should not be even permitted, let alone required, in our gasoline. By the way, I can say that I know several other people who are also suffering from MTBE disease. One is my cousin, who will also be contacting you. The receptionist at my doctor's office says I am not alone, that the number of patients they are seeing this winter is much much greater than they have ever seen before. It seems to me that this is proof that whatever the government is putting into our air is really making a lot of people sick! I hope you can succeed in getting MTBE banned, and if there is anything else I can do to help you in this effort, please feel free to ask. Sincerely, Michael Cangro MC/pmj