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By Spring Gillard on April 25, 2012 I slept sitting up Monday night, propped up by pillows. The sleep was not great, but it kept me from coughing my head off completely. I developed this dry, hacking cough a week ago on the heels of my new patio door install. At least the cough is dry during the night, in the morning I hack up (brace yourself, this is gross), great gobs of yellowish-brown phlegm.
 I have a stinking suspicion that my “cold” is related to living on a construction site. The dust on my dining room table was thick and brownish after the install. Coincidence? Part of the finishing process includes applying a sealant called Tremco 830 to the interior door frame. I had been hearing about the smelly stuff from my neighbours who had already been through the process. They said it lingered for weeks. Apparently Tremco gets smellier as it cures, called outgassing. Sure enough, within a couple days, my place smelled like it had been doused in nail polish remover.
I decided to do a little investigating. A little ahead of lunch break, I took some left over Easter ice cream cake down to the crew office and pumped the head construction guy for information. “So is it safe to sleep in that toxic stuff?” I asked. “It’s not toxic,” he assured me. “So I won’t get a brain tumour?” I asked. “Ha,” he said, “problem is, it won’t appear for 25 years.” “Well, I’ll come after you in 25 years if I do get one,” I said. He laughed, thinking I was kidding. The DQ treatment got me the name of the product.
According to the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS), at least two of the chemicals (xylene and ethyl benzene) in the sealant are acutely toxic when inhaled and are linked with cancer, birth defects, heart muscle sensitization and arrhythmia, hearing loss, brain, liver and kidney damage and central nervous system effects and well, there’s a very long list.
The MSDS warns workers to wear safety glasses, gloves and avoid contact with clothes and shoes. They should wear a respirator mask if they’re going to be exposed beyond recommended time limits. I sat on the couch watching the guy who applied it in my suite, he wore none of the protective gear, neither did I.
There is a stern warning about using the product only in well-ventilated areas and to provide maximum ventilation in enclosed areas. Use local exhaust when the general ventilation is inadequate. It also warns not to inhale the vapors.
My suite is 600 square feet, the patio door is my only window, so there is no cross-ventilation. I leave my door open as much as I can, but with the crew sawing, hammering and stirring up dust above, beside or below me on a daily basis, it is not always possible. On the MSDS I found exposure rates for rats and mice in parts per million up to six hours, but unless you are able to measure the amount in the air, it’s impossible to figure out safety levels for a human breathing it all day and all night.
A few days after the install was completed, my eyes began to burn. I was feeling light-headed and even tasted the chemicals in my food. The MSDS says Tremco may cause nausea, headaches, dizziness, drowsiness, weakness, and fatigue, moderate irritation to the respiratory system, temporary redness and discomfort to the eyes. Last week I started getting a sore throat, swollen glands and this damn cough.
I sent a note to the strata president and the owner of my suite expressing concern for the air quality, especially since we have quite a few seniors in the building. There was no response from the former and a “hope you feel better” response from the latter. Guess it’s every person for themselves when it comes to resident safety. Who is charged with this kind of environmental health, I wondered? Must be Vancouver Coastal Health.
I called their environmental health department, the air quality officer I talked to was empathetic, said the product was dangerous especially in a contained environment. He said he’d send someone over, but when the field officer called, he said there was nothing he could do, it was an approved product. He showed more concern for the workers who are working with it. “But they are outside, they applied it inside,” I explained. He asked me several times if they had applied it inside, as if he couldn’t quite believe it. I asked him if he could do any air quality tests. He said he didn’t have the equipment. I told him not to bother coming over. No need to piss off strata council if the guy couldn’t dig up better evidence than I had collected. (I have gathered my own phlegm and dust samples in baggies, very Harriet the Spy, but probably not useable.)
After coughing most of the night and sleeping very little, I woke up with a very bad headache yesterday, so bad I felt sick to my stomach. I rarely get headaches. I went to see my doctor. She found nothing that confirmed that this “cold” has been caused or aggravated by the on-going construction. If it persists though, she recommended I get a chest X-ray. I offered her my baggies, but she declined. Still my symptoms are on record now. The paper trail begun.
In my research, I also read that the vapor concentrations in enclosed areas may ignite explosively. Wow, good thing I didn’t blow up me and my dinner guest the other night when I struck a match to light candles. Although if given a choice, I’d rather go out in a blast than slow death by poison.
By Spring Gillard on April 22, 2012 Back in the early 1990s, my environmentalist side was just being kindled. I had just started recycling, no easy feat as it was well before blue box years. I was living in Winnipeg at the time and my garden consisted of a few pots of pansies on my balcony. I came across my “environment” file from those years in my on-going excavation of the past. A Maclean’s magazine dated September 1990, contained a special report on the environment with articles on how the average Canadian family pollutes the environment and steps they can take to help. There are case studies on forest company MacMillan Bloedel and Petro-Canada, profiles of activists trying to save rivers and whales and even one on an organic farmer. There are big ads from Alcan and the Pulp and Paper Industry. On the front cover is a picture of a very young Bob Rae with very large glasses under the headline: “Shock Waves.” Rae had just become premier of Ontario, the province’s first ever NDP government.
 Also in the file, I found three Winnipeg Sun articles by David Suzuki. The headlines read: “We must make cities liveable,” “We must learn to see through a child’s eyes,” “We’re using far too much;” all pleas for ecological sustainability, whether he was speaking about social disconnection, reducing our oil consumption, or conserving our resources. There’s also a Vancouver Sun article (July 10, 1993) on his daughter Severn Cullis Suzuki, just 13 years old and in high demand as a speaker following her debut at the Earth Summit in Rio in June of 1992.
There were several articles on the Earth Summit, short for the UN Conference on Environment and Development. In People magazine (Aug 8/92), Maurice Strong, secretary-general of the Summit was quoted as saying, “To survive, we’ll have to change a world dominated by greed, competition and materialism.” One hundred world leaders would attend this largest meeting ever on the environment. Over twelve days they would tackle seven issues: global warming, technology transfer (to cleaner energy), forest protection, ocean pollution, sustainable development, preservation of species, and population control. In the Vancouver Sun (Sat May 30, 1992) – I was back living in Vancouver now – a journalist said, “The world is awash in special-interest catastrophes, but the environment is bigger than any of them, because no matter what your cause – Kurdish independence or the Triple-E Senate or the underclass – it won’t matter if the environment collapses, taking the world’s economy with it.”
Twenty years after the summit, and our federal government has now withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol, is in the process of gutting environmental regulations, slashing programs and funding that will help sustain our national and global ecosystem.
Today I spent the morning at my community garden work party. Perhaps if I just focus on my own environmental progress over 20 years, I will feel like celebrating. Happy Earth Day everyone!
By Spring Gillard on April 20, 2012 The file sorting continues. I was astonished at the number of film projects I had undertaken, or rather film proposals I have written. During my years at City Farmer, I was hell bent on getting a TV series or documentary on urban agriculture off the ground. There were many titles and formats: City Farmers (1995, 1998), Green Chord, Food Land People, Garden Heads. There were countless grant proposals to the Canada Council, Banff Centre, National Film Board and of course pitches to the TV stations and sponsors. I worked with a graphic designer to format some of the proposals and packaged them up creatively. I came close to getting funding or a broadcaster many times, only to have the deals collapse for one reason or another.
 I also took film courses during those years at Cineworks, the Vancouver Film School, Video In. I was a member of Women in Film and was taught and mentored by many of the leading lights in Canada’s film world, like Mena Shum, Guy Bennett, Sandy Wilson and Colleen Nystedt. But the roller coaster ride finally got to me. I realized I was spending all my time writing proposals, when I really just wanted to write. That’s when I switched my attention to writing a book, and the Diary was born.
I found one file called “Various Painful Attempts at Selling.” It is painful to review how much time and effort I put into those years with only dusty files and a few promo films to show for it. Still I was cheered by finding the left over rubber worms and coloured pencils with cabbage erasers and consoled myself with Gandhi’s aphorism: full effort is full victory.
By Spring Gillard on April 18, 2012 I was at a meditation retreat outside of Portland on the weekend. It was held at Queen of Angels Monastery. The Benedictine Sisters who call this place home, are engaged in a number of ministries including an on-site shelter that houses and feeds homeless people. They also support their work by making their own monastery mustard.  I picked up several jars in the gift shop, who could resist with names like: Heavenly Jalapeno, Glorious Garlic and Devoutly Dill. They don’t grow the mustard themselves, although they do have a small food garden area and an orchard. Still, as I roamed the beautiful 15-acre grounds, I couldn’t help but notice all the lawn and ornamental gardens. So much space to grow food. While the meals they served us were delicious and vegetarian, I saw no evidence of composting. I was told they do recycle, but there was room for so much more green infrastructure: rainwater collection, a grey water system, permeable paving, green roofs, and on and on.
Religious orders like this one can be found all over the world. They often own a lot of land and likely the sisters and monks have their hands full with their own duties and prayer life. They are also an aging population and may not have the energy nor the know-how to create a more sustainable community.
Seems to me there are opportunities for some fruitful partnerships.
By Spring Gillard on April 15, 2012 In early 1991, some friends of mine from California started a campaign to conserve oil. It was a response to the Persian Gulf War. As the pledge sheet said, whether you were for or against the conflict, it was clear that the need for oil was a central cause. The premise was that by reducing our dependency on oil, we could prevent future wars and bloodshed.
 Back then Canada was consuming 1.5 million barrels of oil a day. We were considered a net exporter, that is, we imported around 560,000 barrels of oil a day and we exported 740,000 barrels. We were expected to be a net importer by 1996. Today we consume 2.3 million barrels a day, import 1.08 million and export 1.92 million (Source: CIA World Factbook). While the numbers have nearly doubled and the eastern half of Canada relies heavily on imported crude oil, we are still considered a net exporter.
In the information part of the pledge sheet, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute was quoted as saying if the U.S. reduced its use by a slim 12%, they would be free of their dependence on any Middle Eastern Country for oil. I inserted some Canadian stats too, the Canadian Green Consumer Guide claimed that “energy experts now regard energy efficiency, or energy conservation as a source of energy.” The authors said that a 25% reduction in energy use just in Ontario would eliminate the need to complete Darlington, the world’s largest nuclear power plant and would enable the province to shut down two smaller plants as well as some coal-fired and oil-fired power stations and hydro dams. The World Resources Institute said that through energy efficiency and conservation, we could cut our carbon emissions in half. Yes, we were talking about global warming back then. The pledge boldly stated that reducing our use of petroleum and petro chemical products was the single most valuable thing we could do to protect our health and environment.
Just below the signature space, there were tick boxes where you committed to a percentage you were willing to cut your consumption by. There were tips to tell you how – most of them pretty familiar by now, ride a bike, buy food nearby, vacation close to home, car pool, use telephone and fax to replace business trips as much as possible.
That last one deserves a moment. I had to retype the original pledge that I received from my friends, because I had a hard copy of the original faxed to me, scanning wasn’t around or at least it wasn’t in my world yet, and we weren’t using email in my workplace. I typed it on a Xerox Memorywriter, a kind of precursor to the computer. I Canadianized it somewhat, copied it and began to distribute to family, friends, local politicians and religious leaders. I think I even set up at a community event – which would explain the signs I found in the file.
 Two decades have passed and news from the Middle East hasn’t changed much, nor the warmongering tactics used by the governments of oil-dependent countries. Sure, we have a few electric cars around, we’ve switched to LED and compact flourescent bulbs, maybe we no longer drive to the corner store, but the numbers above expose our continued addiction to oil.
We may not have gotten the message too clearly around petroleum use, but the way we send messages has changed dramatically. The pledge might have gone viral if we’d had Facebook back then.
By Spring Gillard on April 13, 2012 I’ve had some pretty funny jobs in my day. I worked at a cannery, sorting apricots on the conveyor belt and cleaning the rotten, mushy ones out of the slop tray. I was then promoted to the exciting job of pitting, where I fed one apricot at a time into a machine for eight hours. I lasted about ten days. I was a carhop at Dog ‘n Suds in Penticton. And of course a Compost Hotline Operator. But perhaps the funniest one of all was “Ball Girl” on the lottery show. Yes, in addition to being Creative Supervisor, writing and producing print and TV campaigns for the Western Canada Lotteries in Winnipeg, once a week, I would get all gussied up, then head to CKY-TV to  tape Winsday. The late sportscaster Don Wittman was the host of the half hour program. My job was to pick each ball up from the machine as it dropped, then hold it up in my perfectly manicured hand and smile. The camera would zoom in to show the audience the number on the ball. All that apricot work gave me the skill and dexterity to manage that feat. Although, I did drop the ball, twice.
Looks like Ontario has put some of their ball girl videos on Youtube for all to see. Perhaps it’s time to dig out all my old videotapes from the storage locker and transfer them to DVD. See if I can upload the one of me chasing the ball across the stage.
By Spring Gillard on April 11, 2012 My neighbour across the hall smokes like a chimney. The smoke wafts out into the hallway, stinking it up and on particularly heavy days, creating a wall of blue. It also seeps under my door and into my suite. Since the balconies have been torn off, she’s taken to smoking on the back steps, where the smoke curls up and in through my patio door. My only source of ventilation.
 I have spoken to her about it, but of course, she owns her suite. She’s entitled to smoke in her suite. Or so she thinks. I found a great on-line resource called The Smoker Next Door, which gives some great tips and information on handling secondhand smoke in multi-family residences. Here’s a pretty important paragraph:
The biggest hurdle to resolving disputes about drifting secondhand smoke is misinformation. Your landlord, management company, or owner’s association may be unaware that it is perfectly legal to require that an apartment building or condominium be smokefree. This can include private units, as well as outdoor areas such as patios and balconies. People often mistakenly believe that there is a legally protected “right to smoke” or that a smokefree building policy would discriminate against smokers. However, there is no such legal right to smoke, and people who smoke are not a protected class. The courts have held that protection of nonsmokers against the hazards of secondhand smoke takes precedence over smokers’ desire to light up wherever they choose.
My neighbour is polluting the surrounding environment with her habit and endangering the lives of the rest of us in this building. The smoke from the burning end of a cigarette or pipe or cigar, contains over 4,000 substances, several of which are carcinogens. The Environmental Protection Agency in the US reviewed more than 30 studies and concluded that secondhand smoke is indeed a carcinogen, in the same class as asbestos and benzene – and that it causes 3000 deaths a year in non-smokers! Health Canada has similar information on their website. The smoke also increases the chances of asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia in kids and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
We have children in our building, along with non-smoking adults and animals, but the strata has so far refused to impose a no-smoking bylaw. In the US, where folks tend to take legal action as a first resort, things turn around quickly at the first whiff of a lawsuit. As a Canadian, I have employed the diplomatic and educational route. Talking to residents and the smoking parties, posting notices on bulletin boards. I have suggested to the strata that they at least put a ban on renting to smokers. So far they are just blowing me off.
By Spring Gillard on April 8, 2012 We took my nephews to the Vancouver Aquarium on Saturday. They loved it of course. The displays of brightly coloured fish and undersea life are breathtaking. The Aquarium lived up to its promise of: Engage. Amaze. Inspire. Except for the beluga whale show. We waited and waited for the show to begin, even the adults were restless. One of the staff, a young woman, gave a long preamble, which stretched into a very long monologue. We kept waiting for the show to begin. The belugas wrinkled their foreheads. Flapped a fin. One of them could stand up to its waist in the water. All the while, the woman droned on, distracting from any activity that was actually going on. My eight year old nephew turned to me at one point and asked, “When is she going to shut up?” My thoughts exactly. It was mostly young kids in the audience, there wasn’t enough  going on in that pool to engage, amaze or inspire. The “educational programming” was just a boring sermon on climate change and conservation and likely above the heads of most of their audience. The staff would have been better off saying nothing and letting the whales engage us enough for us to want to learn more about them. Instead I suspect, like me, most of the audience tuned out. We were all shocked when the woman announced the show was over, we were still waiting for it to start. The grand finale came when one of the whales spit water onto a family or two. It was unimpressive, that is if you’re old enough to have seen the orca show and the wall of water that would drench half the crowd.
I am on the fence about the whole critters in captivity debate. Every summer holiday, when we were growing up, my parents would take us to the Stanley Park Zoo and the Aquarium. They had to drag us away from the monkey cage, we would be mesmerized by the polar bears, delighted by the otters and the dolphins, and the orcas, now those whales put on a killer show. Those visits probably did help instill in me my love for animals and as the Aquarium website says a “profound caring for flora and fauna and the environments in which they live.” In fact, I love animals and fish so much, that I don’t eat them. But that beluga show in no way provides “the ultimate visitor experience.”
Belugas live mostly in the Arctic. They call them the canaries of the sea because they are so musical, giving off high-pitched whistles, chirps and clicks. I was lucky enough to see the white whales in the wild on a trip to Churchill Manitoba, but not everyone will have that opportunity. Facilities like the Aquarium give rare access to marine life. But even the whales must be disappointed with that performance. Not sure if they signed a contract, but I’m sure I heard them singing an old Engelbert Humpback tune, “Please release me, let me go.”
By Spring Gillard on April 6, 2012 In 1979, after graduating from the University of Victoria with a degree in French and linguistics, I had no idea what to do with my life. I was working at Safeway in Victoria as a cashier when I got word that I had been awarded a monitorship at the University of Quebec in Trois-Rivieres. I had applied, but it was long past the time when I should have heard, so I had written it off. The last minute offer meant I had to completely uproot my life in about ten days. I was terrified and wasn’t sure I wanted to go. But two of my French profs sat me down and said if I didn’t get on that plane, they would drag me on board themselves. Then my parents flew into town and helped convince me to go. So off I went to school for another year and taught conversational English to students in exchange. The university organized many cultural activities for us too, visits to the maple sugar cabins, late night ice fishing on the river during the winter, theatre outings in Montreal. A very rich experience.
 I also met a guy there. He was from Toronto. We spent the summer in Quebec City working as waiters. Then I headed back to Victoria, he went back to Trois-Rivieres to complete his degree. I started a Master of Arts in French literature at UVic. I only did one course though before heading back to Trois-Rivieres to finish off the year with the guy. I taught English at Berlitz, then we both moved to Toronto.
I was working as a waitress again, when I decided enough was enough and began seeking a career in advertising. While in Toronto, I also toyed with the idea of doing an MBA, it was the degree of the day. I studied for the GMAT – the exam measures your suitability for graduate business studies. I was definitely not suited and flunked with flying colours. Meanwhile, the guy decided to do his law degree in Ottawa. Long story short, the ad agency job and the relationship ended and I moved to Vancouver. I got work at CFUN Radio, officially launching my copywriting career. Life unfolds, but usually not according to plan and sometimes accompanied by heartache.
Here I am, 33 years after graduating from UVic, about to go back to school. I’ve been accepted at UBC to do a Master of Arts in Adult Education. Do I really need another degree? Not sure. Last time around, it was the guy who influenced the course of events as much as the degree. We’ll see how things unfold this time.
By Spring Gillard on April 4, 2012 I’m addicted to Teflon. I’m trying to give up my habit, but it is a struggle. While cleaning out my cupboards to make room for a new, non-Teflon wok, I removed all my non-stick pans. For the last couple weeks, I’ve been using stainless steel or glass frying pans. I feel like I’m learning to cook all over again as even the heat is different. I burnt my popcorn to a crisp the other night. I spent a very long time scrubbing with scouring pads and finally had to scrape the black bits off with a knife. I almost ran to the giveaway bag to retrieve my pans. Almost. But the chemicals used to make non-stick and stain-resistant products like Teflon, Scotchgard, Gore-Tex and Stainmaster are linked to a host of diseases including cancer. Not only are these perfluoronated compounds being found in the outer environment they are also being found in the bloodstreams of animals and humans, including babies. Studies by the Environmental Working Group found that mothers are passing their industrial pollution to their fetuses. They even found Teflon in the umbilical cord blood of newborns. The tested babies had around two hundred known toxins in their blood at birth including Teflon, mercury, fire retardants and various pesticides.
 Even the US Environmental Protection Agency has deemed the chemical a likely carcinogen, but instead of banning it, they just nicely asked companies like DuPont and 3M to make their products less likely to break down and they have until 2015 to do so.
All of us have toxic chemicals and pesticides in our bodies, even if we eat a pure organic diet and live on an island. For example, renowned BC wildlife artist, Robert Bateman, was part of a 2005 Canadian study; researchers found forty-eight different pesticides in his body, deemed the “body burden” of the average Canadian. The eighty-eight chemicals researchers tested for are known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors. The highest number of chemicals was found in a Cree chief from Northern Quebec, more evidence that toxic heavy metals are accumulating in Canada’s north. Teflon has been found in Arctic Polar bears and marine life as well.
Gregor Robertson, the Mayor of Vancouver and co-founder of Happy Planet, a successful organic juice company, participated in another study. He was shocked with the results; over thirty toxins were found in his teenage kids who were raised on a farm eating only organic food. They even had traces of PCBs, chemicals banned before they were born.
With little government oversight, it’s up to us to stop buying these harmful products. So I really am trying to kick my Teflon habit, even if the other pots and pans are more work and make me look like a bad cook. Problem is, I still have the temptation in my apartment. I have no idea how to get rid of these pans. I don’t want to spread the harm by passing them on to someone else. There are no recycling programs, except in Ann Arbor according to one on-line article. The same author also suggested sandblasting the Teflon off the pans. Teflon sounds like a prime candidate for an extended producer responsibility program. How about it DuPont?
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