Hamilton, Hamilton, Hamilton. I love it and I hate it. I don’t want to leave, but is it even possible to stay with the amount of air pollution? Is this city going to kill me?
It’s more than just the struggle of my immune system to fight off the regular cold and flu here. That’s hard too. But what I mean is why does my body attack itself here?
When I was growing up, I had brutal eczema, strep throat, and headaches. The most remarkable feeling was the general unwellness. I thought I was just a sensitive kid. I never wanted to go outside - I had a headache. Something about being here gave me a headache. I have a headache.
But then I went away - to Kingston, Ottawa, around the world. And not “all of a sudden” because it wasn’t sudden… but somewhere along the way, my unwellness disappeared.
Away from Hamilton, I never had a headache.
Then COVID happened and I returned for longer than a weekend visit home. And then the headaches began again. Only this time I had something to compare them to. And I was older so I could recognize and verbalize my thoughts and feelings.
I didn’t want to breathe the air.
One day I had a particularly horrible sleep - something was telling me to close my windows. So I did. I was suffocating with them open and closed. Weeks later after researching possible causes, a kind stranger in the Try Me Again Later chat responded to my request for a mapping of air quality. Why would I have needed to close my window? Why do I have the instinctive need for fresh air? I had to search back two weeks, but then I found it: the night in question had a massive, remarkable spike of sulphites in the air. I went to get a personal air filter that day and it’s been running non stop since. But it can only help so much. It can’t filter the air outdoors.
The Hamilton I grew up with isn’t the one that exists now. There weren’t as many non-profits who were working to make the city better. Those are all relatively new. Clean Air Hamilton didn’t exist. And the group is doing a fantastic job. But how effective can you be as a group if what you’re up against is a massive behemoth that’s constantly producing air pollution?
Anecdotally of course, there are so many pauses and causes for concern. Why are the feelings of unwellness and noxious smells always worse on grey, foggy days? How come the air quality seems to be worse on weekends?
I didn’t have COVID until a year after I moved back to Hamilton in 2022. That was two years into the pandemic. Then the headaches started again. But then more started happening: my iron tanked, my blood sugars were all over the place, night sweats persisted, neuropathy… My healthcare team started treating me like I had… diabetes? Not even the one I can control, but the one where my pancreas goes on the fritz and my body starts attacking itself?!
It’s well researched that hormonal issues, such as Type 1 diabetes, can be caused by air pollution. And the hormonal and auto-immune issues caused by air pollution don’t stop there! Allergies, asthma, insomnia, eczema, and PCOS (to name a few) are also linked to air pollution.
Talking anecdotally to many woman of reproductive age in Hamilton brings up mutual struggles that seemingly have no end or cure. Aggressive allergies that show up as rashes on the skin, eye sensitivity, a need for something, something - anything - to cure the relentless allergies. The curious development of pernicious eczema in multiple people. PCOS and hormonal imbalances that cannot be addressed or resolved by normal self-care responses. The inexplicable way that multiple people in the same city can have insomnia and a raging headache on the same night? What the heck?
No, I’m not the only one in this city.
But do we know that all of our symptoms are linked together under a common cause? Probably not. Are we mobilizing together against the cause? Some people are, under amazing groups who fight to protect our clean air. But perhaps without greater numbers, their work has not enough gas to create immediate, urgent change.
The response I normally launch into is flight… But if you love your city, your people, your place then it feels hard to move. Not to mention it’s costly to move and with housing prices today, it’s next to impossible. But why SHOULD we move? Why would WE move? Shouldn’t we try to speak up first?
Contact me if you have a story about how air pollution has affected you.
