Aamjiwnaang residents talk about symptoms as airborne chemical levels are reported

Tuesday I was not feeling well when I got up at a sore throat. But I went to work anyway and as I got to work I just, my symptoms got worse and worse. And I kind of thought like, I had a flu coming on, ’cause I had a headache and I was feeling nauseated and I had cold symptoms like like irritated throat, irritated nose. My eyes were sore and I just like thought it was a flu. Anyway, I messaged HR and I messaged administration. Let them know like I’m going home, I don’t feel well and I’ll be at home if you need me kind of thing. And laughed about lunchtime. And then I sat on my back porch, ’cause I’m like, I’m not feeling well, so if I sit outside, maybe that’ll help like get these symptoms to move through. Anyway, we got the message that there was elevated benzene in the air and thought we were to work from home. Well, my home’s only a kilometre away from my office, so I didn’t feel safe immediately. I grabbed all my stuff I had outside, moved it back inside, started talking with my daughter. She also had the same symptoms that I had soon as I had lunch, like I’d, you know, I wasn’t feeling good. Then I start feeling sick. So I end up my lunch went, you know, and then I start feeling tingly. And I said I I went and checked my sugar and it was it was fine. So I went back and told my boss, I’m going, I’m going home. I’m not feeling good. So he but it was, I don’t know, 1:30 or something. He says, oh we’re going to shut everything down anyway. So yeah, going home, you know. And so on the way home I stopped and told her I says I’m going to rest, you know, like stop in a couple hours and check on me. He calls telling me he’s not feeling well and it’s like not normal for him to like say I’m not feeling welcome check on me like that’s not normal for him. I was scared and then he told me he’d been working outside all day. So I’m like, I got even more scared and he ended up showing up at my house a few minutes later and like just one look at him, I could tell he was faint. He was weak like he just he didn’t look well end up in the hospital and they they they didn’t really do nothing for me other than just keep reading my symptoms and everything you know my blood pressure and everything like that and whatever but everything was it was good my my my oxygen level was low for a bit but it went back up and but I just was still feeling like got kind of out of it you know still to the Today I still feel a little funny. I know that benzene is cancer causing. I know that that’s a long term effect of like being exposed to it it’s eventually that’s what it does it causes cancer and and it just terrifies me like knowing like that he was exposed to it all day long like out how we are now with the wind blowing directly in that direction. It was a north wind that day. Like it’s been blowing at him all day long. And like, I just like what if he had collapsed and like was just laying there by himself waiting for someone to come by him. Like what if things had been a lot worse? And now like what levels was he exposed to being out in the open? Like is he going to end up with some kind of cancer now? Like, we don’t know that. We don’t know that answer. Like I’ve worked in it all my life and never really bothered me like that before. So I have not. I don’t like I don’t know what could be done. I don’t know. You know for them to have monitors out there, you know you think of to be safe. But somebody would have said something, but nothing was done till till I start feeling sick.