Environmental illness

 When, in group settings, we were asked not to use perfume because it makes some people sick, I would mentally roll my eyes. But now, because of a book I read, I think such sensitivity is real. For some people, everyday substances–scented products, pesticides, plastic, synthetic fabrics, smoke, electronic radiation, mold, car exhaust, preservatives–cause them serious respiratory, gastrointestinal, and neurological illness. A subset of this group is so hypersensitive they can’t bear to live in ordinary settings. Some moved to a small community near Snowflake, Arizona, which, at 6000 feet altitude, is relatively free of toxic substances. They live in peculiar dwellings.

As one sufferer described an incident of exposure to mold, “My neck was throbbing. It was hard to breathe. My whole body hurt.” A doctor could find nothing wrong with him. As you might expect, medical doctors tend to dismiss the notion of environmental illness, but some do not, including one professor of environmental and occupational medicine, who calls the disease TILT: Toxicant-Induced Loss of Tolerance. She believes that the disease starts with an exposure, which leads to sensitivity. Thereafter, even minimal exposures can provoke outsize effects.

Even though such extreme sensitivity is not common, some degree of environmental sensitivity is probably more common than we realize. Consider chemicals alone: the US environment is home to more than 85,000 chemicals, the vast majority of which have never been tested. That new car smell is the product of 275 different volatile organic compounds. Umbilical blood tested in some Canadian newborns found evidence of 137 different chemicals.

I’m not careful about using chemicals. When I clean the bathroom, the air I breathe is inundated with the odors of the various cleaning compounds I use. Probably all toxic.

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