SPF Trade Secrets - mixtures of unknown chemicals

There is a petition in circulation calling for Full Disclosure of the chemicals in spray foam insulation (see the second link in the sidebar to the right, or click here).

What have we been exposed to? The spf chemicals we do know about are bad enough but we might never know everything we've been exposed to because some the ingredients of spray foam insulation appear on the MSDS as mixtures of unknown chemicals called "trade secrets". Signing the petition is a no brainer.

The following is a screenshot of Demilec's Sealection 500 Side B MSDS...

My Spray Foam Experience, Continued...

I haven't written much because I feel sick and I'm under so much stress. I've been living in a cheap apartment for almost a year, the lease is due to expire in October and I can't renew because I can no longer afford to pay rent. I'm terrified of the house with the spray foam in it, I've only been in the house twice since I moved out over a year ago, and that was for only a couple minutes each time. After the symptoms I experienced during the 2 months following the spray, just the thought of being in that house paralyzes me with fear. When my lease expires in October, I will be homeless unless I move back into that house because I've used all my savings, tapped out my credit cards and I don't make enough money to live anywhere else. Financially, when I was living in the house the money I make, along with my partner's support, was a comfortable life.

But, to add even more insult to injury, my partner of 12-13 years, who swore he'd be with me through thick or thin, has already deserted me emotionally and threatened to desert me financially if I don't move back into the house. So I've had no emotional support from him. Even a little emotional and moral support could have helped, but in fact he has made it all worse because of his apparent lack of concern for me, his verbal abuse, and threats which he uses to try to manipulate me to move back into the house. He was overseas when the foam was sprayed and didn't come back until 2 months after.

According to the doctor I saw at Duke University, people who are in the house during the spray are the people who seem to have the most severe health problems. Of the people who are not in the house during the spray, some might get sick and some might not. This seems to be the case with my partner and I, however due to his work he has only been in the house a total of 4 months since it was sprayed last July, and only for 2 months at a time so there's no telling what longer term exposure could do to him.

I also talked to another individual who was in the same situation: he was in the house during the spray and was seriously affected but his wife was out of town and she never had any symptoms of being affected by it. At the time I talked to this victim, it was 2 years after his exposure and he was still sick and still couldn't even be near any of his things that were in the spray foamed house.

To make matters even worse, I'm not the owner of the house so I've had problems finding an attorney to represent me and I don't have the money for costly air testing and medical tests to prove that the foam has made me sick and the house was and is too toxic for me to safely live in. More about the attorneys, air testing and medical aspects later.

Back to my present situation. The weeks following the spray, I made a lot of costly mistakes. I didn't realize the severity of the problem and continued for about 2 months to think I could have the house "cleaned" to resolve the problem. I paid for the wrong air tests, I paid to consult with people who either didn't care or couldn't help, I spent a lot of money staying in hotels, eating out, and boarding my cats at the vet clinic. I rented a storage unit, lived I my car and tried to camp out in my backyard in a tent to save money. I had to buy new clothes, linens, towels, etc., because everything that came out of the house had odors and residue of the spray foam, but many of the new fabric items I bought I ended up not being able to use and I didn't realize until later that it was because I had become sensitized to the nasty chemicals that are used to treat most fabrics.

I know I'm probably repeating some things I've said in my other blog posts but my thinking is often foggy and no longer organized as it was before my exposure to the spray foam. I have no doubt that some of this is probably caused by the extreme stress I've been under since last July when the foam was sprayed, but one of my worst fears, other than being homeless, is the chemicals in the spray foam have permanently damaged my brain. One of the worst symptoms I had during the first 2 weeks I was still living in the house after the foam was sprayed and during the following 2 months when I was going in the house with people who were coming over to assess the situation, was disorientation and forgetfulness. The forgetfulness began the first week during which I would lose track of what I was saying midsentence; during that first week I was feeling very spaced out and even caught myself drooling. It was terrifying. Then later after I moved out, the feeling of disorientation would come over me after about 20 +/- minutes of being in the house, and which followed a sudden feeling of weakness, like I might collapse if I didn't get out of the house. The disorientation would last for several hours after I left the house, and I would later wonder if that was the feeling which a person with early Alzheimer's disease would feel - recognition, but not being able to put it all together, knowing where you were going but not being able to figure out how to get there - which happened to me several times while I was driving and found myself unable to figure out how to get to familiar places I'd been numerous times. It was bizarre and like a horror movie, and also reminded me of some bad dreams I've had, the kind where you can't get to where you want to go, you are running but can't get anywhere, etc.

During that first 2 months, beginning just days after the foam was sprayed, I was paying and begging people for help, and I alarmed some of my friends with phone calls and text messages when I would be freaking out with severe panic and anxiety attacks. A few times, some of my friends wanted me to go to the Emergency Room and maybe I should have, but I don't have health insurance...

More later.

Why Spray Foam Insulation?

I can honestly say that I've regretted it every time I ignored my gut feelings, and my spray foam experience is no exception. I'd read the MSDS for both Parts A & B of Demilec's Sealection 500 foam and the ingredients made me cringe; despite the claims, I'm intelligent enough to know that there is nothing "green" about using a product with such toxic chemicals. But, like probably everyone else who has had foam insulation sprayed in their attics, I wanted lower utilities bills and a more comfortable home. In fact I was desperate. We have 2 HVAC units, one upstairs/one downstairs, and during the most extreme months of the year, both winter and summer, our utilities bill were well over $500 and sometimes over $600. The North Carolina summers are particularly excruciating for me and I would try to keep the house cool but during the hottest months the temps upstairs would often be in the 80s which, of course, would increase the temps downstairs as well. The indoor humidity, particularly upstairs, was often unbearable so I would also run a dehumidifier, which I would have to empty twice daily if I left it running 24/7, and I usually ended up sleeping downstairs on the sofa anyway. Which also increased my chiropractic bills.

I ignored all the red flags, and some of those red flags were huge and blatantly flapping in the wind in front of my face...

• The ingredients of the foam alone should have been enough of a warning;
• Shane Hunter, the spray foam salesman for Ross & Witmer at the time, seemed to me like a stereotypical "used car salesman" (no offense intended to you honest used car salesmen). He tried to be charming but to me his charm was seedy at best. I did not like him and, as it turned out, he was lying about almost everything;
• Jeff Elog, the manager of Ross & Witmer (not sure if he's still the manager), gave me an uneasy feeling, although I couldn't pinpoint why. As it turned out, he had knowingly misled me into continuing to think that Ross & Witmer was the same company who sprayed my girlfriend's attic;
• The date for the foam installation was July 13, 2012. That was a Friday. Although I like to think of myself as not being superstitious, the date gave me reason to pause, which I blew off because I didn't want to appear to be superstitious...;
• Back to the spray foam ingredients. That really should have been enough to deter me from having it put in my house. Our attic is huge and like Bernie said, "there's a lot of foam up there."

During the week preceding my initial meeting with Shane Hunter, the temperature in the house had reached the low 90s upstairs and was in the 80s downstairs. I had both AC units running full time. Yeah, I was desperate... and the only conclusion I can come to is, with the help of Shane Hunter and Jeff Elog, desperation superseded all knowledge, reason, logic and gut feelings...and thus I convinced myself, despite all the warnings, that I needed to have spray foam insulation in the attic.

I can honestly say, without a doubt, that was the biggest mistake I've ever made in my entire life.

Anxiety and Depression

This is much more difficult to do than I thought it would be. Reading my spray foam journals and looking at my pictures have caused me to psychologically and emotionally revisit the entire trauma of the day they sprayed the foam, and the weeks and months following, and feel a lot of anxiety, panic attacks, and deep depression again. Not that I was completely over any of that, but I had sort of learned to deal with my situation so that it wasn't affecting me as deeply as it had been. It's not easy when your entire future, including financial security, has been wiped out and you are left with a void. That is, a void that includes a new sensitivity to common environmental chemicals that makes living in a cheap apartment (which is all I can afford), or even visiting friends, difficult. How do you tell someone that their home is giving you a headache? Not many people understand and I've heard "well, do you think it's all in your mind?" too many times. Fortunately, not everyone thinks it's all in my mind, but the folks who are sympathetic and have an understanding of what has happened to me are few (and sadly include only a couple of my friends). But like Bernie said, "you know what's in your mind and this is real." Thank goodness for Bernie, who has spent a lot of time listening to me on the phone and trying to help me find a glimmer of hope. Bernie even when out of his way to visit with me and have a look at our attic when he was in my area testing another home with a bad spray foam job. Thank you for your kindness, Bernie.

The mental damage is easy to figure out: your entire home smells like a chemical factory, then later like a pile of dead fish, and you've come to the realization that you can't live in your home unless you want to use an SCBA and wear an entire protective suit 24 hours per day. Then later you begin to panic because you find out you've been exposed to a big dose of hazardous chemicals, some which might cause cancer but even if you don't get cancer you could have any number of other serious effects in your central nervous system, endocrine system, cardiovascular system... But you don't know exactly what you've been exposed to because some of the ingredients are "trade secrets". It's very traumatic.

But, after I was exposed to the spray foam chemicals in the house, it took several months for me to realize what was continuing to happen to me physically. At first, after I moved out of the house and into a hotel, I didn't understand why I was still having problems with symptoms... until I talked to another spray foam victim that I'd been in phone contact with. The first question he asked me was about my clothing, which I said I had in the hotel room with me (in my Tumi luggage, along with all my other personal items I'd brought with me from the house), and told me he, 2 years later, still can't be around anything that was in his home when it was sprayed without getting headaches and other symptoms. My clothes had smelled like spray foam chemicals when I took them out of the closet and actually continued for months to retain spray foam odors, which changed over time similar to the odors in the house, including that fishy type odor, even after many washings.

So I put all my favorite clothes and shoes into storage, ended up selling my Tumi luggage, and bought some cheap shit. Ha! Jokes on me. I then learned, from yet another spray foam victim that I'd already talked with a couple of times, whom I called the day I walked into the mattress store and experienced burning eyes and sinuses, breathlessness and dizziness, that he suspected it might have to do with the fire retardants or formaldehyde...or any number of other nasty chemicals... in the mattresses. He and his wife had had great difficulty finding a mattress that didn't cause headaches and other symptoms after their exposure to spray foam and subsequent chemical sensitivities. So then it began to dawn on me that fire retardants and formaldehyde are in practically everything. Including my new cheap clothing and my car...

I wasn't ignorant to the fact that our entire environment is saturated with toxic chemicals, and that we are surrounded by polyurethane foam products, but they had never affected me like they do now. Now, I wonder if I will be able to find a place to live in which I don't feel sick...other than on a beach on a tropical island in the Indian Ocean. If I could afford that, I'd already be there trying to get over this traumatic spray foam nightmare.

Give me some time. I promise I will tell the whole story. But here are some tidbits...

Our attic was sprayed on July 13, 2012. I began having disturbing symptoms that same day, which gradually worsened. I finally had to move out 12 days later.


Above is a photo I took the day they sprayed. They actually let me go up into the attic, never told me it was dangerous or that I shouldn't. They had just begun spraying, as you can see, and suddenly the spray noise stopped and I heard a lot of stomping up and down the stairs, so I went to investigate. I later learned that, from the beginning, they were having trouble with their spray equipment and had sprayed a lot of off ratio foam. Later, when I asked the guy why he kept spraying he said, "well, I thought the job had to be finished that day." What a fucking idiot. Thank you Ross & Witmer and Brandon Tucker.

Here are Shane Hunter (on the ladder), Hunter Crosswell and Tucker Travis in the upstairs hallway, getting ready to spray our attic. Notice the carpet still on the floor and nothing is protected. I questioned Shane Hunter about that and he said it would be alright so I figured it would; especially since my friend said they had taken great care of her lovely home. But at the end of the day there were foam particles, foam mist droplets, and a lot of dirt on the carpet, on an old wooden trunk that was left in the hall, on the woodwork, walls, stairs, and even in the downstairs hallway.

I'd gotten the name and number of Shane Hunter from a friend of mine who'd had her attic spaces insulated with spray foam and was quite please with the entire job from beginning to end. I was in her home about a week after it was sprayed and there was hardly any odor when I smelled the foam in her attic. Although I now can't spend any time in her home, because the odor was so minimal and after a very scant bit of reading about how great spray foam insulation is, I decided to use foam insulation, and that's why I called Shane Hunter to do the job. I had no reason not to trust my friend's recommendations. She has a gorgeous home and spends a lot of money on it.

I have no idea where Shane Hunter is now, but the week of panic following the spray, we learned that he'd been fired (for some sort of unethical behavior...) from Energy One America, who Shane was with when my friend's attics were sprayed, and then hired by Ross & Witmer almost immediately. When I talked to Jeff Elog, the manager of Ross & Witmer, he never indicated that he had no idea who my friend was even after I told him how pleased she was with the job they did at her house, and neither he nor Shane Hunter ever told me that it was a different company who sprayed my friend's home. I was led to believe that everything would be the same, including the foam which I later found out was another lie - NCFI was sprayed in her attic and Demilec in mine.

I also later learned that none of these Ross & Witmer boys had ever sprayed foam as a retrofit into an attic before, and that they had just been "certified" right before they did so for the first time in our house. In fact, Brandon Tucker told me, when I finally questioned him, after the damage was done, that all they'd ever done was use a "small rig" for sealing holes, whatever that means. The only guy at our house that day with experience spraying foam was someone named Armando who, I later was told, speaks hardly any English and might not have even been "certified". I can't verify that, though.

 
 

The Story About My Spray Foam Experience

This blog will be the ongoing story, from the beginning, of how spray foam insulation ruined my life.

On July 13, 2012 I had spray foam insulation sprayed into the attic of our 3600 sq. ft. home, which was built in 1915, and where I'd lived with my partner for about 12 years. We'd spent thousands and thousands of dollars restoring and remodeling the old place, and over the years I'd spent many, many hours toiling in the yard, turning the acre of land surrounding the house into a garden I could enjoy.

I was told by the contractor that I didn't have to leave the house or get my cats out when they sprayed the foam into the attic...but that was the first question I was asked by a prominent Duke U physician, who is familiar with the effects of SPF...were you in the house when it was sprayed?

It's been one year since I had to move out of my house because the spray foam insulation made me so sick. The symptoms I experienced during the time I was still living in the house, and every time I entered the house after I moved out, were terrifying (and my cats that were in the house also had symptoms of exposure). Today, I'm still experiencing the residual effects of that initial exposure to the toxic chemical vapors that filled my entire home, and saturated everything I own, the day they sprayed. What's even more frightening is what the future now holds for me; not only am I broke and near homeless, for 12 days I lived in a house that was filled with the vapors of cancer causing chemicals.

I have it all written down in journals, I have photos, letters and documents, and I'm going to tell all. I have nothing left to loose by naming names. I'm broke and I've lost everything because of spray foam insulation. I'm 57 and might soon be homeless unless I want to live in a house that terrifies me and makes me sick. But I'm afraid if I spend too much time in that house, it will eventually kill me. Actually, it might kill me anyway, even if I never go back inside that house.