Category: Uncategorized
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Crematories & “Safe” Chemicals
What does Bill Clinton’s sex life have in common with dead people? I’ll get to that in a moment. First, a little bit about me. I’m like Pavlov’s dog when it comes to the word “safe,” except that instead of drooling when I hear it, I start googling. That’s because…
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Airlines Slow to Respond to Health and Safety Standards for Flight Attendants
Initially, the Harvard Flight Attendant Health Study set out to learn how flame retardants in the home affect the endocrine system. Who better to study than people overexposed to flame retardants? Airplanes are covered in flame retardant. Enter flight attendants. Harvard teamed up with the Association of Flight Attendantsunion (AFA) and…
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Dear Kamala Harris, Our Airline Uniform Made Us Sick
Dear Kamala Harris, I’d like to say thank you. Thank you for caring about people, all people, regardless of race, age, gender, social status or sexual preference. Thank you for standing up and fighting to make this world a better place by shedding light on a serious problem we have…
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Welcome to the Club Nobody Wants to Join
Welcome to the club nobody wants to be a part of. That’s how we greet newbies who join our support group for American Airlines employees who’ve had reactions to toxic chemicals in the new uniform. As of Jan. 1, 2018, there are 9,688 members in our private Facebook group. Since the new uniform rolled out on…
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Brace Yourself: In Defense of “Hysterical” Flight Attendants
An AirAsia plane “plummeted” from the sky, and in every news report I read, passengers complained that flight attendants panicked. I’ve been a flight attendant for over 20 years. I have a hard time believing the crew panicked. They may have looked shocked, but panicked? Define panicked. One passenger told Seven…
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Fly Me: It’s 2017, so why are flight attendants still being sexualized?
I’m a flight attendant. My job is to make sure passengers get from point A to point B as safely as possible, which is why I’ve been trained to handle any number of emergency situations, the kind that airlines don’t want you to think about when you’re in the…
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When it Comes to Flight Attendants, Why is the Media so Sexist?
“YOU HATE SEX, DIRTY DIRTY SEX…” That’s what a stranger tweeted to me out of the blue last year. I remember staring at the computer screen and thinking, what in the world…? Because I like sex. Why did she think I hated sex? Someone else followed up with something about…
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My Uniform Made Me Sick. Could The Same Thing Happen To a Hockey Star?
On Friday nights in Dallas, when I was in high school, I liked to go to free concerts in the West End. My friends and I would dress up, walk around and basically goof off. On one of those nights a good-looking man handed me a rose. He’d bought…
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Connect the Dots: Can Airplanes and Toxic Uniforms be Linked to Thyroid Disorders and Infertility?
A couple of weeks ago the New York Times published a story about cats that have hypothyroidism. A few people tweeted the link to me. One person wrote that it reminded him of me and what’s going on with the new uniforms at American Airlines. According to the article, feline hypothyroidism…
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Open Letter: Why I won’t wear the American Airlines uniform
Dear Ms. Surdek, My name is Heather Poole, but you probably know me better as employee 447110. I’ve been a flight attendant with American for 21 years. I love my job and I’ve always been proud to work for American, so much so that five years ago I wrote about…
Heather Poole 