Revised 15/Oct./06.
Doctors, Allergists, ENTs, and Environmental Physicians:
We Make House Calls! We have over 20 years experience providing Doctors unique monitoring and assessment data from patients' & Physicians' environments for chronic and acute exposures that make proper diagnoses much easier, and sometimes provide easy, low cost ' remedies' that never have side effects! We can assist those patients diagnosed with maladies indicative of the possible presence of a toxic environment including very low level exposure to complex mixtures of chemicals, biologicals, and radiologicals. We frequently identify, from nothing more than a quick visual inspection, serious sources of problems or concerns without doing any monitoring at all!
We sometimes use more than one sample to characterize an environment when it is not problematic. We can monitor conditions over long time periods with sophisticated, powerful industrial hygiene sampling methods for any chemical, biological, radiological or physical insult, even those that may be intermittent or episodic. This can be achieved with automation, real time analyses, or analyses from independent laboratories we know and trust. Some of these costs have actually gone down over the years while gaining sophistication from computerization. We work under your direction, professionally, discreetly and promptly. Costs can be a lot less expensive than you may realize and might be covered by 'Doctors' services. Our powerful methods give Doctors a clear enhancement in obtaining the correct diagnoses quickly, minimize patient bills & suffering, and is entirely consistent with the Hippocratic Oath. We submit when discovered, unsolicited, peer reviewed, relevant, scientific articles to those Doctors whose interests we know, to conveniently keep them abreast of new findings in our complementary field.
Important advice to Doctors: Screen those who purport to be Industrial Hygienists, as the field is virtually unregulated and the title has virtually no protection, in great contrast to that of Doctors and Engineers. Thank the Colorado State Legistature for their refusal to act on our title protection requests for four years in the middle 1990s. Certification (CIH) can be an Engineer or Geologist! Ask three questions: What did you study in school; what were you doing 5 years ago; and what were you doing 25 years ago? Degrees outside the areas of environmental chemistry, Industrial Hygiene, microbiology, and some other forms of biology are dubious. Another such charlatan never even finished high school. See the code for details. Those that mix remediation and/or hardware sales with assessment are phonies and have conflicts of interest. Genuine I.H.s have real degrees in relevant areas like Chemistry and Industrial Hygiene from real universities. The best have long, environmental experience, the more the better. A professional Forensic, Environmental Chemist or I.H. can ascertain what needs to be done, create a working plan for remediation, provide remediation oversight, report results and monitoring data, provide follow up assessment to ascertain degree of cleanup which can reveal remaining, undiscovered insults; provide relevant, peer reviewed articles from relevant scientific and medical literature; and consult with the Doctor for the best long term care of his/her patient's environment.
Words of Wisdom. Listen when he reports that conditions do not warrant or allow sampling until remediation is completed. Many common conditions preclude sampling as the Forensic Chemist may already know from an inexpensive on sight assessment. He shouldn't be paid to monitor an environment, he knows to be highly contaminated during his visual evaluation, unless there is medical or legal justification. The Scientist will get relevant environmental monitoring data in the form that meets your needs. Have the I.H. oversee remediation in the manner he prescribes. The Scientist may have knowledge of needed sources of additional services. Inform your patient of new directions treatment could be taking based on environmental findings. Whenever possible offer patients', with limited resources, they will need a budget. Evaluate whether or not you can include I.H. services as Doctor's services. The I.H. must do follow up (post remediation) monitoring to verify degree of clean up and assure no insults, hidden by previous problems, remain. Consider occasional, routine monitoring, like drinking water, over the long term.
Our fantasy is for Doctors to use their influence to pressure the insurance industry to get serious about vast medical claims' losses they are funding because they do not realize the pervasiveness of environmentally linked insured losses nor the low cost, permanent solutions available when the Doctor is assisted by an Industrial Hygienist when treating illnesses suspected or known to be linked to environmental exposures. Industrial Hygiene solutions have no side effects!