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July 17, 2007

THE TOXIC EFFECT: AN I-TEAM 8 REPORT ON YOUR KIDS WELL-BEING

The Toxic Effect: Part One

By Karen Hensel, News 8 @ 11:00

INDIANAPOLIS -- Two Indiana mothers are fighting what happened to their
children after simply spraying for bugs. The I-team 8 investigation
"The Toxic Effect" will have you looking very diffrently at your home
and yard.

Two mothers in central Indiana, two toddlers forever damaged. It is
what one of the mothers calls "heartbreaking" and the other calls it a
"cover-up."

Christie Ebling came home from the hospital a beautiful baby girl.
Then as a toddler she was bright-eyed, full of excitement and energy.
Christie is now 17 and has spent the last 14 years enduring thousands
of seizures.

"You have to have her guarded at all times," said Christie's mother
Cindy Ebling.

There have been hundreds of falls.

"We've had a fractured nose and a broken nose falling out of the chair
at breakfast," Cindy said.

It has been a lifetime locked into the world and mind of a two-year-
old. In February of 1994 their New Albany apartment complex sprayed
regularly for bugs. Christie was four and her brother AJ was six-
months-old. Within months of the spraying repeated seizures began.

"First one I remember, AJ was in his walker and I thought he was
choking, his teeth were gritted, his eyes watered and he wasn't making
any noise," Cindy recalled.

The diagnosis from doctors was chemical exposure. Repeated seizures,
sometimes hundreds a day, took their toll. AJ did not start talking
until he was four. Christie, by now five, did not talk for an entire
year. Healthy children slipped away into neurological damage with
every seizure.

"During that time we would have one or both kids in the hospital,"
father Todd Ebling said.

With both kids in the hospital, Cindy miscarried their third child.
About the same time a few cities away in Indianapolis, doctors were
warning Mary Jane Hannan.

"They told me immediately: do not have any more children, do not get
pregnant, there are too many birth defects related to this chemical,"
Mary Jane said.

The Hannan family was experiencing flu-like symptoms after having
their home sprayed for ants.

"Your eyes would burn, skin would itch, throat sore, headaches, ears
hurt. That's what it is supposed to do, it attacks your nervous system
and how it kills the bugs, attacks the nervous system," she said.

The applicator later admitted in a court deposition he sprayed 15
times the recommended amount of an insecticide containing an
organophosphate called Diazinon. Chlorpyrifos is another
organophosphate in hundreds of products including Dursban,
manufactured by Indianapolis-based Dow Agro Sciences.

In 1995, a year after the seizures and headaches began for both
families, the EPA fined Dow $832,000 for failing to report adverse
health effects on pesticides including Dursban. The EPA alleged Dow
knew of nearly 300 cases.

"This is one of many situations and it is covered up, nothing is
done," Mary Jane said.

The Eblings hope to be different.

"This is, I think, the most serious case," said Ebling family attorney
Roger Pardieck.

Pardieck of Seymour is prepared to fight for Christie and AJ.

"For the Eblings they look at a lifetime of caring for these children
24/7 as long as they are alive. They can't be left alone," he said.

Christie at 17 spends her days playing puzzles of a toddler. One
milestone, she has just learned to high-five.

"The conversations we could have with a "normal" four-year-old we
cherish now because we can't do it anymore," Todd said.

Dow declined 24-Hour News 8's request for an on-camera interview but a
spokesperson maintains Dursban is safe.

The Hannan family sued Dow unsuccessfully.

The Ebling case, Christie and AJ, are expected to go to trial next
year.

Although the EPA eliminated the manufacture of Dursban for residential
use it is still used commercially in the United States.

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