Poisoned

March 13, 2017
Bell’s account of his struggles with devastating health problems caused by his exposure to environmental toxins is by turns horrifying and inspirational. Bell was a highly successful Florida attorney, happily married, and the father of a young daughter when his world fell apart in 1989: out of the blue, he began experiencing dizziness, joint pain, and fever that made it increasingly difficult for him to function. The cause of his symptoms remained a mystery until 1991, when he was diagnosed with an environmental illness caused by the office building he’d been working in. That diagnosis didn’t end the story, as Bell spent years searching for a cure or even a palliative treatment. His ordeal took a serious toll on his family life. The story has a positive ending, as Bell was able to harness everything he’d learned about the scope of environmental illness to advocate for increased resources to research the problem. By framing the political issue in such personal terms, Bell strengthens his call to action.

February 15, 2017
The story of a Florida attorney who nearly died from a mystery illness borne in a high-rise office building.Bell, a former organized crime prosecutor, harrowingly details the sinister malady that robbed him of his livelihood and nearly his life. He first began experiencing symptoms in 1988 while working high above Fort Lauderdale in a newly constructed office building. The author's youthful aspirations included aiming high for the U.S. Senate, but his plans took a detour with family life, child-rearing, and a potentially deadly new health problem. Episodes of shortness of breath, waves of nausea, and vertigo became more prevalent and vexing, and though diagnosed and treated for pneumonia and a fungal throat infection, the inexplicable symptoms continued, morphing into an all-encompassing sickness that perplexed medical specialists. With some diligent research, Bell eventually began correlating his deteriorating health to a human poisoning condition called "sick building syndrome," which surfaced in the 1970s when buildings were sealed to conserve energy. The author was eventually forced to exist in a sterile bubble as his sensitivity to chemicals and airborne irritants increased and radical detoxification efforts failed. Though his marriage collapsed during his crisis, things did improve once he began treatment for lesions on his brain, doubtlessly exacerbated by exposure to toxins. Though Bell's life span and vitality have been severely compromised by this ordeal, he educates and forewarns others by citing several intriguing cases of environmental poisoning involving black mold, neighborhood pesticides, and an unregulated toxic waste dump. All of these examples reinforce the new career direction he now takes in advocating for victims of environmental and chemical injury. His frustration with the current lack of governmental awareness and action is clearly evident, though Bell does his part in generously sharing pages of lifestyle modifications geared toward detoxifying the home and one's lifestyle. An important cautionary memoir about the dangers of everyday chemicals and environmental toxicity and its lethal consequences.

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March 15, 2017
Today, environmentally caused illness is widely recognized to be the result of climate change, pollution, and the thousands of toxic chemicals we're exposed to on a daily basis. Indeed, the World Health Organization reports these factors are responsible for fully 25 percent of all deaths worldwide, or 12.6 million deaths out of 55.6 million annually. But in the late 1980s, such a diagnosis was considered quackery. Unfortunately, that's when young up-and-comer Bell, who had just moved into his brand-new office in a brand-new Miami office building, first began experiencing inexplicable symptoms of dizziness, fatigue, an inability to concentrate, even seizures. As his symptoms worsened, the formerly athletic attorney consulted doctor after doctor, each offering a different and inaccurate diagnosis. It would be more than a decade before his illness was correctly diagnosed and successfully treated. But not before it had cost him his career and his wife, even forcing him to live inside a sterile bubble in the Arizona desert. His compelling story is a canary-in-the-coal-mine call for more stringent regulation of industrial chemicals.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)