Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 14, 1995 TAG: 9505190001
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MONTVALE LENGTH: Medium
But five years ago, Travis was quarantined in a North Carolina hospital. Isolated for 15 days in a sterile environment, he wasn't allowed to eat for almost a week.
Except for a few weeks when he tried to go to back to school, he was homebound from the fifth grade until the seventh grade. He stayed in his family's trailer, which had been modified to be almost chemical-free. His medical costs drove his parents to bankruptcy.
All his life, Travis has suffered from a rare disorder known as multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome. He is highly allergic to common household chemicals, fibers and plastics - even the toys he played with as a child. His plastic soldiers had to be baked in the sun for days before he could touch them.
As an infant, Travis suffered from terrible earaches. Later, he had breathing problems and stomach pains.
But his condition worsened after he started school at Montvale Elementary. A doctor who later treated him said that gasoline vapors from the tank farms that surround the school worsened the boy's health problems.
``We went through six years of total hell,'' said Betty Hunt, Travis' mother. ``Every year, he would get a little worse - vomiting, headaches, repeated infections, sinus infections that never cleared up, bronchitis, and then the bronchitis would lead to asthma.''
``At Montvale, he missed more days each year [and] the number of antibiotics that would help him would decrease.''
The Hunts lived miles from the school and the tank farms. Betty Hunt was perplexed because Travis seemed better when he was on vacation from school.
She learned what was causing Travis' health problems when she read a newspaper article about a boy with similar symptoms who was being treated by a North Carolina doctor who specialized in environmental illnesses.
When she took Travis to see Dr. F.M. Carroll, Travis' immune system was so weak, she said, ``We're not sure what would've happened to him. He was so sick, he thought we were taking him there to die.''
In a 1990 interview with the Roanoke Times & World-News, Carroll, now deceased, said, ``I can tell you this boy is in a lot of trouble from this tank farm. He needs to be transferred to another school. There's no way he can stay there with that concentration of petrochemicals.''
|n n| Travis now misses about 20 to 30 school days a year, usually when he has a reaction to perfume or cologne.
He attends Liberty High School in Bedford and lives miles from the tanks.
``It's such an incredible comparison where he is now,'' his mother said.
``I'm not bitter, I guess, but when it came down to it, the people [at the tank farms and the school] didn't care. They weren't interested in helping me find out about testing the water or the air quality.''
She calls folks in Montvale ``benzene-headed'' because she read an essay that listed hardheadedness and contrary behavior as a symptom of benzene exposure.
Hunt is worried about telling her son's story because her husband drives a gasoline truck and they rely on the oil companies in Montvale for a living.
``Don't run the chemical companies down,'' she said. ``If there's an alternate location [for the tanks], that's the key to this.
``My son was allergic to milk, but that doesn't mean people should shoot their dairy cows.''
by CNB