Mr Paul Wright (54) who was brought up on his late parents' Burnley farm, has spent years struggling with illness which has affected his personal and professional life.

He is now unemployed, disabled and on benefits and says only strength of will and determination to find out what was affecting him, has kept him going.

Despite visits to doctors and health professionals, and varying diagnoses of his condition, he paid for private tests which have proved he may have been affected by organophospates – or sheep dip – poisoning, which has led to other problems and is destroying his central nervous system.

He says this accounts for him being diagnosed with epilepsy, MS and mental health problems as chemical poisoning can stay in the body and cause neurological problems.

It was only when he was seeing a mental health counsellor who mentioned the possibility of chemical poisoning and did research that he contacted a specialist in Wales who carried out the tests.

Now he wants to warn others not to be fobbed off if they fear they may be suffering from something similar.

Mr Wright, who stood as a parliamentary election candidate for the Liberal Democrats in 2001, started having problems when he was at Towneley School and says his condition has worsened throughout his adult life.

Since he was a boy he worked on his family farm, Hollins Farm in Ightenhill Park Lane, with his late parents Dick and Margaret Wright.
He regularly used sheep dip and when he had to leave the farm he went on to work in the chemical industry at Blythe's Chemicals, Hapton, for 12 years.

Now he says that although nothing can be done to improve his condition because the damage is already done, he feels better for knowing and wants to warn other people.

"There must be hundreds of people who come across chemicals in their working life and don't realise the effects they can have. When I was working at Blythe's if everyone had been affected like me something would have been done immediately.

"The first person I had to convince was me. It was only when I started looking into it properly myself I realised this was happening to me.

"Anybody reading this who thinks they recognise the symptoms must press their own doctor. It is only because I have been persistent I have got this far," he said.

Mr Wright, who used to have a milk round in Burnley and was once licensee of the Dugdale Arms, says the Government should set up a national register of sufferers. "The Government can ignore 50 of us but they can't ignore 50,000. People should know about this and know where to go and get tested and shouldn't have to pay like I had to."

A report from specialist Dr Sarah Myhill says: "Throughout his working life Paul has had major exposure to chemicals, partly through his work as a farmer working with sheep dip and also as a chemical process worker. The toxicity of chemicals has been very much ignored by the medical profession, but there is no question they have huge potential for major harm and major neurological problems. It has now been recognised that much of Gulf War syndrome, sheep dip flu, aerotoxic syndrome, sick building syndrome and so on result from such toxic chemical exposure."