The Dangers of Natural Gas

**PLEASE SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION AT www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/221218609**  

Sample:  We the people of (your state) demand our right to know the chemical content of natural gas and a list of health symptoms that can arise from exposure to it.

Natural gas has another danger besides leaking deadly carbon monoxide and causing explosions. It is not safe as the industry leads you to believe. It is poisonous to breathe and can kill humans and animals. I did not have a faulty furnace, I did not have carbon monoxide poisoning. My home did have a small natural gas leak that never accumulated to the point of explosion. What it did is poison my family and make us very ill. Here is my story...

MY STORY by Roxanne Bedford

I began feeling ill the winter of 1999 and 2000. I had what seemed to be a bad cold that would not go away. A health clinic took an x-ray and saw fluid in one of my lungs. They prescribed medicine for bacterial pneumonia but I did not have bacterial pneumonia. I had chemical pneumonia caused by breathing natural gas in my home. Because at that time I had not discovered the gas leak and didn't know their was such a thing as chemical pneumonia, took the antibiotics but I was getting sicker instead of better. 

I noticed that I was becoming more and more forgetful like constantly losing my car keys and not being able to backtrack my steps from the time I had them even if it were minutes before. I was so extremely tired, like I was sleepwalking everyday. I slept whenever I had five minutes available to. I often could not walk straight and bumped into walls. I was worried that this was Alzheimer’s disease and I was in my thirties.

I had these episodes where my brain felt like it was saying hold up, stop everything. I would feel a strange sick feeling all over and quickly sit down to not faint. I had a strong desire to clench my fists and I tried to talk to my kids but I could only say the words "um" and "okay". My vision went hazy and into tunnel vision. My heart beat sounded very loud and slow. I forced deep breathes which was difficult to do because my lungs felt like they were not expanding. My forced deep breathes brought me out of the episodes.  Once out I could not remember what I was doing before. I had to really give it a lot of thought or ask my kids what I was doing. 

Once in an episode, I was looking at my children unable to make sense of why people have children. I wondered about them not being mine and being aliens. In two episodes, I experienced claustrophobia, once in an elevator and once when looking out at my square shaped neighborhood on a cloudy day. I learned much later that natural gas has a narcotic effect so basically it was like I was high on drugs but also I learned that natural gas takes away oxygen so my brain was reacting like a brain that doesn’t have enough oxygen to function properly. It would seem as though I was having epileptic seizures and I’ll write more on that later. 

My symptoms over approximately an eleven month period: sinus, pneumonia, vomiting upon waking, nausea, nosebleeds, memory loss, extreme fatigue, headaches, weak and bleeding gums and teeth, dizziness, bloating, intestinal parasites, intestinal cramping, flatulence, constipation, diarrhea, weight gain, loss of appetite, loss of menstrual cycles, depression, claustrophobia, itching in genitals, loss of libido, pain in hands and feet, low grade fever, cuts not healing, night sweats, hair loss, chest pain, heart pain, partial-seizures (conscious) and one grand-mal seizure (unconscious).

I also saw many concerned human faces appearing one after another just after closing my eyes at night. My spiritual side says that they were people who died trying to warn me but my common sense tells me that I was so poisoned the narcotic effect from the gas made me see them. It is important to know that the gas affected my health months before I noticed the gas odor and I often stood approximately one foot from the leak, doing laundry, without noticing it. A head cold can keep people from smelling it and the exposure caused me to have cold symptoms the entire length of the leak.

I was gaining weight, over 150 lbs., from 130 lbs. I was eating less because I felt sick so it didn’t make sense to me to gain weight. For a while I blamed it on lack of exercise so I walked every evening but kept gaining.  Every morning (not on purpose) I threw up stomach acid, later becoming tainted with blood. Stomach acid has burned away most of two lower molars (I now know that I shouldn’t have brushed my teeth after vomiting stomach acid, I should have rinsed instead and I learned that people who have bulimia‘s teeth rot too). 

My health was deteriorating and because my memory was so bad, I had to quit my evening job delivering pizzas because I could not remember my delivery area which included my own neighborhood. My boss knew there was something wrong with me and was concerned.  He supported me in a lawsuit I filed later. I was able to continue my day job as a school bus driver with help from an adult bus aid (and friend) who knew my situation and because I wrote down on paper every street I should turn on for all of my bus routes.   

I didn’t want to go to the doctor before figuring out what was going on with me first. Why, people ask me all the time did I not go to a doctor.  It is because I do not trust them. I fear being poked, tested, charged a lot of money, wrongly misdiagnosed and on dangerous drugs for the rest of my life.  When I finally did decide to go to a doctor, all of those fears came true. 

I checked my diet. I don’t take any medications. I asked mechanics to check my car and bus for carbon monoxide leaks. My furnace had recently had a yearly check for carbon monoxide. The only thing different was a small odor of natural gas in the basement, noticed in April of 2000. I called the gas company and told them I had been ill for a very long time and smelled natural gas. I was told to open windows, not to switch on any lights and to get out of the house. I showed the repairman the spot where I smelled the gas. He only brought a carbon monoxide detector, not a natural gas detector, and, at the time, I like most people, had never heard of a natural gas or methane detector. Also, like most people, I did not know that carbon monoxide gas and natural gas are NOT the same thing. Of course, the carbon monoxide detector showed a zero reading.  He told me that the zero reading meant there was no gas leak and that it is normal to smell natural gas near the furnace. He also said that I could not blame natural gas for my health problems because it is harmless to health.

The leak continued to leak and if it had accumulated enough, our place would have blown to bits.  It was a townhouse with people living on the other side of the walls. A carbon monoxide detector cannot detect natural gas, make sure the gas men are using the right equipment and know that you can test for leaks yourself.   

The difference between natural gas poisoning and carbon monoxide poisoning is  natural gas poisoning is caused by inhaling the natural gas fumes leaking from the pipe that carries it inside the house from the gas meter. Those are "before burn" fumes. They are not yet burning in the furnace. Carbon monoxide poisoning is caused by inhaling the "after burn" fumes leaking from the furnace which should be vented out of the home.

Another example of gas poisoning and carbon monoxide poisoning is gasoline in your car can poison you but cannot cause carbon monoxide poisoning before burning in the engine. It is caused by inhaling the exhaust fumes after burning in the engine. The before burn poisoning is different from the after burn poisoning.  Some natural gas leaks are located in between walls and  are harder to locate.

With no confirmation of a gas leak by the gas company, I complained to the rental maintenance where I lived about the gas odor and health problems. The maintenance worker who has an HVAC service told me I should have never called the gas company because it is the rental property‘s job to check for leaking gas. He sprayed soap and water on the gas pipe. The soap will form a bubble at the place of the leak but it did not work, possibly, because not enough soap was added or another reason. The repairman left saying that natural gas is harmless to health and the pipe continued to leak.

An evening in August of 2000, I made plans to take my children out for an evening. I showered, dried off, brushed my teeth, towel dried my hair and began brushing my hair. While brushing my hair, I felt one of the strange overwhelming feelings coming on.I grabbed a hold of the sink counter still standing, the bathroom light looked blinding bright, I felt hot, the room began to go dark, I had telescopic vision and had difficulty breathing. I was angry at these spells so I closed my eyes, held on to the counter and tried to cuss it away. It didn’t work.  The room went totally dark and in an unconscious state, I fell to the floor. My children heard jumping noises and called out to me. When I didn’t answer, they looked under the door and saw my feet kicking. I was having a grand-mal seizure and/or asphyxiating to death. Lucky me, I lived. I woke up feeling beat up and weak. My lip was bleeding, I had lost my bladder and felt a strong need to sleep. I stumbled to bed, slept a while and decided that this was too serious to continue to try to fight on my own. I called a friend and asked her to drive me to the ER. I had put a quarter size knick in the door during my unconscious fall to the floor and the landlords charged me $50.00 for a new door, nice folks that they are.  

I wish I had never gone to the hospital because, like I said before, my fears came true. I would have been better off left in the woods so my poor poisoned body could detox. I was around germs, more toxic chemicals, getting unneeded costly tests done to my brain by untrained doctors.  Medical doctors do not have training in toxins but who knows that. They don’t offer that important bit of information when you are laying there nearly poisoned to death, I know.  I told a neurologist that my house stunk of natural gas and asked him to test me for natural gas exposure.  He assured me that he would do the testing but he was lying because I now know that there is no testing for natural gas poisoning, although, I believe there must be, it is just not used. There truly must be a test to show, if not methane, then the added chemicals that are in natural gas in the human body. 

A friend of mine went to my home to get me some clothes and the gas odor hit her as soon as she opened the front door. The gas was accumulating which leads to explosions. The neurologist had costly tests run on me (MRI, CT Scan, all negative results) and told me that natural gas is harmless to health.  He diagnosed me with epilepsy. I was completely shocked and felt betrayed. I was given dangerous medication with horrible side effects and sent back home to live with the deadly leaking gas.  

Most people take a doctors words as some God’s but not me and I choose to keep believing this way.  I was dealing with feelings of depression along with everything else. The depression made me weak to my beliefs and I started taking the epilepsy medication. It made my room spin circles when waking and on the third morning I sat up and spun out of bed hurting myself. I found some inner strength and stopped taking the medication. The neurologist told me that I should not have stopped taking the meds and prescribed another kind which I never took. 

I decided to learn all I could about epilepsy especially since the only information the neurologist gave me about the condition was to not drive for six months, no operating dangerous machinery and no swimming alone. I found the Epilepsy Foundation in the phone book and they sent reading material. I learned that 70% of epilepsy cases are from an unknown cause (70%, that’s horrible), that epileptics feel healthy and normal between seizures and that seizures can be caused by a loss of oxygen. BINGO! Seizures are caused by a loss of oxygen.  Natural gas takes away oxygen, therefore, causing a seizure.  If you have been diagnosed with epilepsy but you are miserably ill everyday then you might not have epilepsy because people with epilepsy feel healthy and normal between seizures. 

It was now the end of September 2000 and I made another complaint to rental maintenance. The HVAC serviceman was satisfied with his earlier test findings and sent another rental maintenance man to test the pipes. The soap and water solution was sprayed on the pipes and this time it fizzed at a joint in the pipe and landed on the floor in a solid splat. The fizzing was where the leak was.  Again, not enough soap was added or something else was wrong and also again, I was told that there was no leak, that I was in no imminent danger and natural gas is harmless to health. 

I should have had the police, fire, news reporters, the whole bit out to my house but I was not thinking like myself, I was still very deathly ill and not thinking like a victim.  I was still sleeping any minute I could get.  I never believed there was not a gas leak but I found myself many times trying to act like it couldn’t hurt me just to not deal with how big the issue was to me. On October 8, 2000, I was invited to a party and felt too sick to go but went anyway and began feeling better while there. When I returned home I immediately felt sick as I walked in the door.  That was when I knew I had had enough. I made another call to the gas company on October 8, 2000 and I meant business this time. The gas company repairman smelled the strong odor of natural gas and said nothing as he ran past my daughter and I out of the house. He shut the gas off and yelled from his truck for me to call maintenance while he made a call from his truck. What he was trained to do but did not do is to tell us to get the hell out of the house, it is dangerous, and never ever should he have told me to make a phone call from there, we could have blown up. 

If I died from natural gas inhalation poisoning, I do not believe my death certificate would list that as cause of death and if it did I believe it would be the first ever in this country.  I wonder how many people have been poisoned to death from this gas which has been around for years.  Doctors and government leaders are keeping the truth about the health dangers hidden behind lies.  

The leak was at the exact spot where the soapy solution fizzed at the earlier testing. I could touch it flat footed and it was just about a foot from where I stood doing laundry. I never received any apologies. My mind cleared and I became very angry, thinking it all over. I contacted a local newspaper and a story was printed. The gas company lied in the article stating that my call was about carbon monoxide poisoning. The gas company, definitely the woman that took my phone call and the repairman know I stated that I smelled natural gas. I’ve known the disgusting odor since I was a kid. I may knock on your door some day because I smell it in your yard. 

Financially I could not afford to move from there but I did move to a different unit.  The contaminated unit was rented to a family that does not speak English well. During the entire time of the leak, I did not have a clear thinking mind. I was groggy and drugged feeling and a lot of memories from that period of time are gone. I was out of it and I want people to take that into consideration when they are thinking of all the things they would have done differently than I had. Try getting high on a narcotic then see if you can think at all to plan what you would do different. You and your life would be completely different than it is right now if you felt tired, sick and drugged all day everyday.

Had I the knowledge I have now, the correct detector (natural gas/methane) would have been used at my first call, a repair done and our health would not have suffered. I questioned a friend with an HVAC service who explained to me that the gas pipe should have had silicone paste around the joint to help prevent leakage which it did not. He said that gas can eat through Teflon tape wrapped around the threads on the pipe joint. Just to look at the leaking pipe, it looked safe. Other causes for gas pipe leaks are expansion from temperature changes, use of copper piping, older pipes, rusting and ground shifting. Check your gas lines for copper piping and have them replaced.

I decided that I should purchase a computer and begin researching natural gas. I experienced one last gas caused episode in Nov. of 2000 and none since. I noticed other areas of my health getting better and I decided to file a lawsuit. A lawyer took my case but did no work on it so I looked for another lawyer. Many lawyers said I had a good case, some advised suing the gas company, some the landlord and some both but would not represent me. I bought a how to book on filing lawsuits and filed on my own. I later learned from the defendant’s lawyer that the first lawyer put a lien on my case without my knowledge, meaning he would collect his portion of my winnings without doing any work. He denied having the lien in a letter he wrote to me. I don’t know who was telling the truth.

I ordered copies of my medical records for the lawsuit and was shocked to find nowhere was there any mention of my informing the doctors of the gas leak.  I felt scammed. I demanded a note from the ER doctor mentioning the gas and received one from his secretary.  He only cared to get as much of my money as he could get before I had my last breath of gas and my children would not have a mother, who also suffered symptoms and could have lost their lives as well. There are doctors out there who are only thinking of making more money than the doctor down the hall. They are very good actors and can make you believe that they care about your health. They don’t care about the pain losing you will cause your family and friends. Appointments, treatments and prescription drugs make doctors wealthy.  Wake up people, there are a lot of doctors out there who hate their jobs too, it’s the money.  There is little money to be made in telling a patient that natural gas is harmful to health and to get their leak repaired to feel well again.

After doing some research on the Internet, I took my new findings to the neurologist. I wanted to show him that natural gas exposure causes seizures and that I do not have epilepsy.  He was very arrogant and looked uncomfortable talking with me. I told him that I am right and he is wrong and that he is not the only doctor on earth. He walked out of the room shouting MORE POWER TO YA over and over with fist in the air and he did it in front of my children. I talked with other doctors in the Kansas City area who also disagreed with my findings and agreed with the neurologist. At one appointment, I heard the neurologist laughing with the nurses outside the examining room door about the epileptic school bus driver. I wiped my tears, got tough and kept positive about working with this new doctor. He was also ignorant to toxic poisoning. A student doctor did kindly tell me that my high white blood cell count should have never been ignored when in the ER but he soon disappeared after speaking with the comedian neurologist. I wonder what he said to him. Maybe it was, "What are you saying son, think new BMW!" 

The Epilepsy Foundation told me more than once that they would talk with their doctors about my findings but have never gotten back in touch with me. An area toxicologist told me that natural gas is non-poisonous, it is a simple asphyxiant, it displaces oxygen and that ethyl mercaptan is the additive for odor in natural gas.  This was good information for me to have to research. Ethyl mercaptan is highly toxic too. This toxicologist was aired giving information to the public about anthrax yet he lied to me and told me that canaries taken into coalmines to check for methane gas is not true. Please keep sending me your canaries in coalmine facts readers, I do appreciate getting them.

I sent a complaint to the State Board of Healing Arts on the neurologist that diagnosed me with epilepsy (cause unknown) and lied about testing me. They found nothing wrong. I wish my experience on each member of the board and then let’s see if they still find nothing wrong. I have spoken with many of my local and state reps. who pay no concern about any of this. Is this really all over money? When money infects you with greed it can only bring you trouble. We are all equally small beings on one big planet. Money and power can’t make you any bigger than that, you are still small. And as far as natural gas use goes, I cannot see it lessening much by knowing the truth about the health dangers. Smokers have been aware of the health dangers from smoking for years and still choose to smoke. A methane detector should be installed in every home or building with natural gas.
 
Today I am meeting many poisoned victims from natural gas to pesticides to un-properly vented X-ray machines. Other natural gas poisoning victims who email me are going through the same things that I did. Nothing has changed for the better except they find peace of mind in reading my story. One natural gas victim became my legal coach and worked many hours on my lawsuit only to have it thrown out of district court by a onetime sit in temporary judge and then again in appeals court over the misuse of one word. I can’t say that others poisoned didn’t warn me again and again that judges don’t let toxic poisoning cases win. It is a crooked system we have, run by big corporations. Their commercials brainwash us with such tender loving care and everyone gets out their money to give them. Stop buying up all of their stuff that you know you don’t need because if you learn you were poisoned by it, you will get no compensation whatsoever, not even a sorry note. Toxic tort lawyers who are supposed to take poisoning cases wouldn’t take my case, that is really messed up. Erin Brockavich returned an email stating she couldn’t help from California.  Mostly everyone poisoned by ng that contacts me is angry and ready to sue but I tell them that they should work on awareness instead. 

I began my lawsuit pro se, by myself, and then my legal coach helped from Texas but when I went to court, I went alone. I was treated very poorly by legal workers. I was treated like I had no business doing what I was doing by them and unfortunately by most average people.  Justice is going down the drain and no one is doing anything to stop it. I believe support is the answer. To all retired people and workers: take a day off, take a longer lunch and sit in courtrooms. Courtrooms are public places,  you have a right to be there, don’t let anyone make you feel like you cannot sit in on a lawsuit that has nothing to do with you or your family. Show up in large numbers and support justice. Get in there and mean business. Speak out when you hear injustice. You don't need to know anyone in the lawsuit, just know justice.  If I had a full courtroom of supporters, I might still not have had a chance but it would have been a great thing to have. 

I can gladly say that my hair has grown back, I lost the added weight and I have more energy. I still drive a school bus. The neurologist and a company doctor signed me off as being able to go back to work, off all medication and seizure free. I have developed a condition called Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS). Some people call it Chemical Injury (CI). I prefer to call it CCO Common Chemical Overload. Perfume, cigarette smoke, cleaning solutions and other hazardous chemicals make me very ill after a short exposure to them. It can take the next day for some people to suffer symptoms if at all. I instantly react with a headache, sore throat, fatigue, burning watery eyes and can even taste the chemicals I am exposed to. I call the cleaning isle at the store the cancer isle. I still have some intestinal problems, memory, and dental also. I do not know if I have permanent damage done to my body. I have read that my DNA and cells may possibly be damaged, there may be permanent damage to my lungs and may have toxic chemicals stored in my fatty tissues. I do know that I do not and did not ever have epilepsy.

During my lawsuit, I needed causation from a medical doctor but most local doctors were disliked by me, against me or scared to death of being involved in a  lawsuit.  With the advice of others poisoned, I began emailing environmental doctors trained in environmental toxins all over the country and out. I found that it was not affordable for me to pay the fees to even call some of them. I asked one doctor to allow me to make payments and received an email telling me to forward all of my material and if a financial hardship, no payments needed. I cried tears of joy when I read his report linking the long term inhalation of natural gas to my illness. Finally, some justice for me. I made all of the payments, although, not expected of me and I am forever grateful to this doctor. Please read the book he co-authored called OUR TOXIC WORLD - WHO IS LOOKING AFTER OUR CHILDREN. It is available to read online at http://www.healing.org/Child-TOC.html
 

***This is what I want to see being done about natural gas poisoning… I want warning stickers placed on indoor gas pipes or furnaces, warnings in company pamphlets and publicly aired warnings cautioning the health dangers. Mandatory gas detectors in all homes and buildings. Create new laws concerning natural gas health issues, stop false advertising, change MSDS sheets to natural gas IS poisonous. Begin public awareness of the health symptoms, start training in environmental toxins for all doctors and legal justice for persons poisoned. To contact people in government, here is a government contact list http://www.conservativeusa.org/mega-cong.htm.

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