Poisoned Read online

  Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of those mentioned in this book.

  Copyright © 2017 by Alan Bell

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  Cover photo: iStockphoto

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-0264-6

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0265-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Prologue

  1 • Trouble in the Tower

  2 • Lessons in the Courtroom

  3 • Family Life

  4 • The Doctor Shuffle

  5 • A Diagnosis without a Cure

  6 • Life on Mars

  7 • The Leper Colony

  8 • A Castle by the Sea

  9 • Finding My Purpose on a Mountaintop

  10 • Sad Good-byes

  11 • A Foundation Is Born

  12 • My Daughter Saves My Life

  13 • Reentering the World

  14 • From Survivor to Advocate

  15 • Chemicals Take Down a Football Coach

  16 • Black Mold Breaks a Mother’s Heart

  17 • Pesticides Poison a Postal Worker

  18 • A Toxic Waste Dump Destroys a Neighborhood

  Epilogue: Now What?

  Appendix A: How to Modify Your Lifestyle to Minimize Chemical Injury

  Appendix B: Recommended Reading

  Appendix C: An Online Resource Guide for Nontoxic Living

  Appendix D: My Foundation’s Founding Scientific Advisory Board

  FOREWORD

  WE ALL FACE UNFORESEEN OBSTACLES in our lives. Sometimes they defeat us. Other times, with courage, we overcome insurmountable adversity.

  For Alan Bell, a former organized crime prosecutor, a mysterious illness posed not just an obstacle but a near-death sentence. Forced to live in an isolated bubble in the Arizona desert for a decade, he saw his promising career evaporate and his marriage crumble. Yet, despite all odds stacked against him, Alan refused to allow his illness to define or defeat him. Instead, his ordeal transformed him, as he turned his personal misfortune into an opportunity to save others from a similar fate.

  Baffled by Alan’s symptoms, doctors ran test after test as they attempted to diagnose his condition, suggesting everything from chronic fatigue syndrome to a revenge poisoning by one of the criminals he’d prosecuted. Ultimately, Alan discovered a terrifying truth: his condition was caused by exposure to the same toxic chemicals we’re all surrounded by on a daily basis in our homes, schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods.

  Environmental toxins are devastating human health worldwide. More people become ill or die from exposure to environmental toxins than are seriously injured by AIDS, auto accidents, war, and violent crime combined. On the eve of the twenty-first Climate Change Conference in Paris, world health organizations warned of the profound impact environmental pollution has on our Earth’s population. Clinicians and scientists consistently report that widespread exposure to toxic environmental chemicals is threatening healthy human reproduction and exacerbating major health disorders such as diabetes, obesity, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

  Such worldwide concern about how we are destroying our environment, and how our environment is killing us, must serve as a clarion call for our collective awakening and action on an unprecedented scale.

  Alan Bell’s descent into the hell of environmental poisoning puts a human face on this global issue. His journey is an alarming portrait of a tenacious and talented man’s pursuit of the American dream, and how his seemingly charmed life turned into a nightmare. It is also an eternal story of how, even in our darkest hours, the healing and sustaining power of love can take root and grant us the strength to keep fighting for our lives even when all hope seems lost.

  No one is immune to environmentally linked diseases. Toxicity doesn’t discriminate along social, political, economic, financial, geographic, racial, or religious divides. We are all equally at risk: mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, sons, and daughters. Like Frankenstein, mankind has created a monster. Humanity must now stop it before it’s too late. Poisoned is an overdue call to action that we must heed.

  In the words of Justice Brandeis, if there is to be justice, the world will need the truth. Then we must act on what we know to be true.

  Jan Schlichtmann

  PROLOGUE

  “ALAN! ALAN!” MY MOTHER SHOUTED.

  I was lying on the couch in my parents’ Miami Beach condominium. My hair was soaked with sweat as I struggled to breathe.

  The air around my own home was saturated with smoke from wildfires burning in the Everglades. Recently, I’d been seeking sanctuary at my parents’ home as my mysterious asthma attacks became more frequent and intense. They often progressed into full-blown seizures, causing my eyes to roll back and my lungs to shut down. My arms and legs would flail, my vision would blur, my ears would ring, and stabbing pains would rocket through my body in violent waves. Any time this happened—and I could never predict when—it was like a neurological fireworks show.

  “Alan!” my mother yelled again, her voice high and tight with terror.

  I couldn’t answer, rendered mute by lack of oxygen.

  I didn’t understand what was happening. Why was my body betraying me like this? I’d never been sick in my life, other than a few bouts of strange flu symptoms in recent months and now these progressively worsening attacks.

  “Alan! Please, get up!” My mother, truly panicked now, was trying to help me sit up, but it felt like she was far away as I concentrated on trying to drag air into my lungs.

  My father heard the commotion and hurried into the room. “What’s wrong? What is it?”

  “It’s Alan!” she said. “We need to get him to the beach.”

  He quickly tried to help lift me. Despite my recent attempts to find doctors who might be able to solve the puzzle of my rapidly deteriorating health, the only tonic we’d found so far was the beach. For some unknown reason, the warm, clean air of the Atlantic Ocean always seemed to revive me.

  At that moment, my younger brother, Bobby, arrived with his gym bag. “What’s going on?” he asked, alarmed by the sight of my parents struggling to get me off the couch.

  He didn’t bother to ask twice. He knew the answer didn’t matter. At this moment, all that mattered was getting me to the beach.

  I was only vaguely aware of my parents and brother half-carrying me across the room to the elevator. I felt the drop of the elevator as we went down to the first floor, but it was as if I were watching the scene from outside my body.

  After what seemed like years, we were finally outside the building. I could hear the noises of cars and people. More importantly, I also felt the miraculous ocean air.

  I leaned heavily on my family as we crossed the street to the beach, where I collapsed on the sand with
a groan and continued to concentrate on the only thing that mattered: drawing a single breath. And then one more.

  I was scared. But in the weeks, months, and years to come, I was about to learn that, just when I thought things were scary, they would get a great deal scarier.

  And, whenever I thought things were bad, they would always get worse.

  So much worse.

  1 • TROUBLE IN THE TOWER

  SHORTLY BEFORE THANKSGIVING IN 1988, I was sitting in the research library of my law office at 110 Tower in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, when I started perspiring and feeling oddly dizzy. It felt like I was on a ship navigating a rough sea. The room was tipping from side to side.

  “What is this?” I wondered, closing my eyes.

  I braced myself against the desk, waiting for the spinning to stop. After a few minutes, I felt well enough to push myself up from the chair and start gathering my files, but I still struggled to keep my balance as I staggered back to my office.

  I’d been hired as an attorney by Travelers Insurance Company three years earlier. The company had moved into 110 Tower six months previously. The brand-new building had thirty floors; we were located near the top. When we moved in, many of the other suites weren’t yet finished. The walls were still being painted, and new carpeting was being tacked down as I was putting my law books on the shelves.

  Ours was the most impressive skyscraper to ever grace the Fort Lauderdale skyline. Located across the street from the Broward County Courthouse, 110 Tower was considered a technological marvel. These days, many of its features—like talking elevators, word processing rooms, and computerized doors that required swiping a card for entry—would go unnoticed, but back then they seemed like something out of a science fiction movie. The building had its own hotel, stores, restaurants, nightclubs, and fitness center—you literally never had to leave to do anything.

  The Tower used the latest computer technology to regulate everything from the lights to the ventilation system. The windows couldn’t be opened for fresh air; “sealing” the building to save energy costs prevented the influx of hot, humid outdoor air.

  I didn’t see that as a problem. I remember walking into my new office, with its powerful scents of fresh paint and new carpeting, and saying to my coworkers, “Breathe it in! Doesn’t that smell sweet?”

  I felt lucky to be there.

  • • •

  At Travelers, I defended personal injury cases, typically representing Fortune 500 companies. I also had a private practice where I did criminal defense work. In conjunction with all of that, I served as general counsel for my brother, Bobby, who was growing the Banana Boat Company into one of the top sun-care companies in the world.

  Juggling my professional responsibilities required me to work eighty to ninety hours a week. My schedule was brutal. Most mornings, I’d get up by five, run a few miles, shower, then jump into my silver Nissan Z and barrel down the road while listening to motivational talks from business icons like Zig Ziglar. I’d show up early at the courthouse for calendar call, then race over to my office and put in a full day’s work.

  At day’s end, I’d hurry to the courthouse and visit my jailed criminal clients. Unlike my former work as a prosecutor with the State Attorney’s Office from 1979 to 1986, where I prosecuted cases against Colombian cartels, mobsters, and other hard-core felons, my private practice allowed me to pick and choose my clients. Whenever I wasn’t working, I managed political campaigns for judges who were ex-prosecutors. Inspired by my legal career, I even began making plans to run for a US Senate seat, hoping to bring about deeper, systemic change in our justice system. It was my objective to better protect crime victims whose rights were eroded in favor of safeguarding the accused.

  It seemed like everything I’d been working for was coming to fruition. During one rare vacation, a long ski weekend in Colorado, I took out a pad of paper and a pen to sketch out the course of my life for my wife, Susan. I showed her how my prosecutor years provided the necessary skills to obtain this high-paying position as a defense attorney with Travelers. The job ensured that my family wanted for nothing and also left me with enough hours a day to keep my own private practice going. I really could do it all, I told her.

  “One day I’ll be a senator,” I mused. “Then I’ll be better able to make a difference for those who depend upon our government to help keep us safe.”

  “Florida Senate?” Susan asked.

  “United States.”

  Susan smiled. “Senator Alan Bell.”

  “And his lovely wife, Susan.”

  The two of us looked down at our daughter, Ashlee, sleeping in her carrier. “And their darling daughter, Ashlee,” we said in unison and laughed.

  “Is that it?” Susan asked. “Is that where the plan ends?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows?”

  Who, indeed? Everything was moving so quickly that I didn’t have much time for reflection. All I knew was that I was where I wanted to be: on a fast track to the future.

  Back then, I had no idea that sometimes the future is much darker than you can ever imagine. To quote an old Jewish proverb, “People make plans and God laughs.”

  • • •

  Up until this point in my life, I was on a magic carpet ride to the American Dream. I had a happy childhood with loving parents who gave me every possible advantage.

  South Florida seemed like paradise to me as a child. In the 1960s, downtown Miami was nothing more than a small commercial hub. We lived in the suburbs, in a new, squeaky-clean, middle-class neighborhood at the edge of the Everglades. It was a wondrous place, with alligators and armadillos roaming the streets. On weekends we sometimes drove down to the Keys, where we would swim with dolphins. We’d just jump in the ocean and they’d come right up to us.

  I idolized my father, a World War II vet who had landed at Omaha Beach and fought all the way through to the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. After being awarded a Purple Heart, he returned home to New York City and earned a law degree.

  The practice of law never really appealed to him. Instead, he became a successful realtor in Miami Beach. Whenever I saw him negotiate with potential buyers, I was mesmerized by how easily my father spoke with people, taking their concerns into account, changing terms to their satisfaction, and then closing the deal. Later, when I was pursuing my own legal career, my father’s persuasive salesman’s strategies provided my blueprint for success whenever I spoke in courtrooms or negotiated with opposing counsel.

  Our mother stayed home to raise me and my younger siblings, Bobby and Judi, while our father worked eighty-hour weeks. She was the reason why we had moved from New York to South Florida when I was six years old. She essentially put her foot down after one brutal winter, saying, “I’m sick and tired of being stuck in an apartment all winter long. We’re not doing this anymore!”

  For many years, our family lived modestly, while my father slowly but steadily carved out his real estate career. While many other families we knew bought their kids name-brand shirts and Weejun loafers, our mother took us to places like Zayre’s, a discount department store, to buy clothes because that’s all we could afford. Our only exposure to elegance occurred during occasional holidays, when my uncle—who worked as an accountant for major hotels in Miami Beach—could get us hotel rooms for next to nothing. We stayed in many posh hotels that way. Like the Beverly Hillbillies, all five of us camped out in one room and gawked at the amazing swimming pools, beautiful people, and glitzy rooms with their fine carpeting and linens.

  Dad wouldn’t even let us order nickel Cokes by the pool at those hotels. Our only meals out were on Sundays, when he piled us into our car, an ancient jalopy that would often break down by the side of the road, and took us to a nearby Tyler’s Restaurant for the Early Bird Special. We were never allowed to order anything else off the menu because it was too expensive. I didn’t mind, though, because Tyler’s was in the same shopping center as the Carroll Music store, where I’d admire the drum kits
.

  Like millions of other kids growing up then, I was a Beatles fan. (I still am: I have a pair of Ringo Starr’s drumsticks hanging on my wall and an original brick from the Cavern Club, where the band first played in Liverpool.) I dreamed about becoming a rock legend like Paul McCartney or John Lennon. My passion for the Beatles led me to take up drums, and in 1967, my tolerant parents sent me to band camp at Northwestern University. There, I was lucky enough to study with Danny Seraphine, the original drummer for Chicago, the legendary rock band.

  My father tried hard to turn me into an athlete. He wanted me to play baseball so badly that he even signed up to be a Little League coach so Bobby and I couldn’t escape from practice. With Bobby, the exposure to athletics stuck—he became a star at every sport he tried—but I had no interest in sports while growing up. My whole world was music.

  I was lucky to have the mother I did. Her father was an opera star at Carnegie Hall, and no matter how little money we had, we always had a piano in the house. She exposed us to opera and classical music. But Mom was hip, too. Like me, she loved the Beach Boys and the Beatles, and she dressed the part of a cool, fashionable mom, in go-go boots and a beehive hairdo.

  My mother was supportive of Bobby’s athletics, driving him to practices and watching his games, but she and I bonded over music. I wanted to wear my hair like the Beatles wore theirs, and Mom would have let me keep it that way. Dad, however, insisted on taking Bobby and me to a local barber shop, where he’d tell the barber to give us crew cuts. I’d get upset about this, but Bobby loved having his head buzzed. His hero was Bart Starr, the quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, and Starr and all of the other athletes Bobby admired had buzz cuts.

  By high school, I was old enough to run off whenever it was time to go to the barber shop. I managed to grow my hair long, and my mother talked my father into buying me a drum set just like Ringo Starr’s. Music became my whole world. I played in the marching band, jazz ensemble, concert band—you name it. There wasn’t much else for me to do in high school, truthfully, since I was a short, chubby nerd with acne.