On October 22, 2010, I was diagnosed with lung cancer. I have never smoked and was not influenced by asbestos, coal dust, or petroleum products, etc. No one knows why I have lung cancer, but I do.
I started working near an electricity production facility powered by coal about 3 years ago. I constantly pick little bits of grit out of my eyes now and know that I must be breathing those little bits of grit into my lungs too.
I have stage IV lung cancer and now after 19 chemo treatments and 33 radiation treatments, my lungs are so permanently scarred that I will forever having difficulty breathing. I cannot afford any further injury to my lungs due to chemical impurities being released into the air by companies that are not properly filtering their emissions.
Unfortunately, we cannot evaluate the consequences of these dangers unless we require our governmental bodies to establish guidelines and then require various companies to test their output. We need to unite to require companies to test their pollution outputs and then require them to release their test results to the public. I hope to join the American Lung Association to obtain this type of data, and I hope others will join us too.
