I worked in a historical building in an office for 12 years that had arsenic in the attic. They used arsenic to treat for termites a long time ago. It took me 10 years to get the right doctor who finally did a heavy metal test and found the arsenic at a level of 36.9 on that day. It stays in the urine for 4 days and I worked part time. It was coming down the wall in streaks and there was a roof leak and when it rained the stuff would come down a lot worse. I didn’t know what it was. I found out what it was after I moved from the building about 5 years ago. One time the ceiling fell in from the roof leak and when I looked up into the attic that stuff was just plastered up on the outside wall in big blobs and I wondered what it was. My level of arsenic was 0 within 30 days after I moved. I have tried ever since to find an attorney to take my case and they all said they had never done anything like that. So here I am 68 years old and have awful neuropathy and a damaged heart. I’ve had 6 surgeries on my feet because my bones are falling apart and I now have 2 plates, 17 screws and 4 pins in my right foot. I had to have cadaver cartlidge put in my nose last year because the arsenic ate 3 big holes in there. That was a horrible surgery. No one has looked at my lungs but I know they are damaged too. I called the EPA and Poison Control and they would not do anything back when I found out what I had. I wrote to Senator John Warner (first Senator Warner) and I still have the letter where he wrote me back and said I would be hearing from Gov. Tim McCain. I never heard from McCain. I went to the Enviornmental Specialist in the county where I worked and he was supposed to check the building. When I went back a week later he said, “oh, I just meant I would talk to the town manager”. The town owned the building and were in the process of selling it. The new owner converted the office into an apartment. I told the man who bought it BEFORE he closed the sale and he just looked at me and said, “I hope you don’t tell anyone about that because I want to rent it out”. And he did. My doctor told me someone was going to die and that I had to go and tell the tenant. I did, but I don’t think she believed me. I really should be dead but I was just too stubborn to die, but I know someone else will. My doctor said I am the only one he treated for any length of time who had arsenic because someone put it in the others food so it was acute. Mine was chronic, but after 12 years it really did a lot of damage to me. A medical examiner said she never saw anyone who had it like I did that was alive.
I read where they use to sprinkle arsenic powder for termites, but someone didn’t ’sprinkle it in my case, they slapped it up in big blobs. I am supposed to be dead so maybe what happened to me was for a reason- to open eyes and possibly save others. I can not believe the military doctors didn’t think to do a heavy metal test. I told the doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that I just wasn’t coming back anymore because they had not even treated me for the symptoms and that I was going to find me a civilian doctor. It took my neurologist just one appointment and he did that test and found out that I wasn’t really crazy.
PLEASE help me to get the word out. I know that I am not the only one. Others have probably died and never knew why.