No luck in Las Vegas - auto painter develops MCS and EHS

No luck in Las Vegas

An auto painter develops multiple chemical sensitivities and later electrical hypersensitivity. Unable to tolerate the electrosmog in the city he ends up in a remote canyon in Arizona.

Keywords: multiple chemical sensitivity, electrical hypersensitivity, housing, story, disability

Jeff C. lived in Washington State, where he custom-painted big trucks for a living. After several years, he developed multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) and could no longer do this work.

He felt better in the dry desert, so he moved to Las Vegas where his brother already lived. There he got a job maintaining the automatic entrance doors used in casinos and grocery stores.

The casinos had 24-hour service contracts, as it was vital that their doors always worked. Jeff was on call round the clock and carried no less than three cell phones.

His job allowed him to be outdoors much of the day, but his health continued to get worse. He became electrically hypersensitive and could no longer wear the cell phones his job required, and the electrosmog around the casinos also became too much.

He quit his well-paying job and tried various other jobs, including washing windows. He also had to give up his home and move away from the electrosmog. He lived in the back of his pickup truck, which he parked in a canyon outside the city, while he commuted to work. He used his brother’s apartment to take showers.

This was still too much, so he had to stop working, apply for disability, and only go to town once a week or so for groceries and visiting his brother.

Jeff and his truck during his 2001 visit to Dallas.

Jeff spent years living in the back of his truck, parked in areas far from air pollution and electrosmog. He felt much better there, but he did not get stronger.

He then tried moving back to Washington State, where he rented a couple of cabins. One he had to leave because of his neighbors, the other because “smart” electrical meters were installed.

Jeff then bought an old travel trailer he refurbished and parked in areas with no electric service. He spent the summers in eastern Washington and winters in Mohave County, Arizona.

Finally, he bought land in a remote canyon twenty miles (30 km) east of Kingman, Arizona. Here he built a cabin with a DC-only solar system. This worked very well for him.

In 2001, Jeff had traveled to visit the environmental physician Dr. William Rea in Dallas. Rea told him to watch out for lung cancer when he turned fifty, due to his work painting trucks. That was very prescient, Jeff died of lung cancer in January 2019, at the age of 53.