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Shelter: A Quest for Non-Toxic Housing
Crocuta writes "Many of the geeks on /. voluntarily confine themselves to their homes for vast
stretches of time, but what happens when your home becomes your prison? Eric Hunting
suffers from Environmental Illness which perpetually confines him to his home, which even
as carefully furnished as it is, is still slowly killing him. His website, Shelter, is both a plea for help and a guide
documenting one man's quest for non-toxic housing."
My mom just built a house. She has spent upwards of 20 years designing it to be mostly passive solar, and was very careful about what went into it. (She is, honestly, just this side of whacko when it comes to believing "industry safety" and pays much attention to the very non-publicized reports in things like science news, etc).
Helping with the house, I learned a _heck_ of a lot about what I dont want in my house. The stuff that you put in and never give a thought about is incredibly dangerous! From the formaldehyde released by everything from your insulation, plywood, and flooring to your couch and carpets, added to the fact that todays houses are usually wrapped in Tyvek or some other non-permeable barrier means you are breathing deadly gasses the entire time you are home.
This is scary stuff! I have to personally wonder how much of the "cancer rise rates" are directly related to things like this.. especially the huge jump in Lung Cancer in the last 20 years. It certainly is not only due to smoking, as smoking levels have been decreasing steadily.
It's kind of scary what "they" can get away with selling you as "safe". There are huge warnings on certain exotic hardwoods that the dust created by them is toxic, and some people can have allergic reactions to them, but CCM and CCA pressure treated wood is regularly used by people to build raised bed gardens. (Nothing like having chromium, arsenic, cadmium, and other fun things leaching into the soil around your tomatoes!) I honestly think if most people knew exactly how they make PT lumber, they would _never_ use it for their kids to play on or in their homes. But lots of people do. This stuff is going to be the Love Canal of the future.
*sigh*
People like me, however, when I bring it up, are just labeled "paranoid". The thing that REALLY annoys me is that things like Cedar and Redwood are naturally just as resistant to decay, and a fully renewable resource.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
From what i've read/seen on the topic of people with multiple personalities, many of the personalities have sicknesses that other personalities don't. Some wear glasses others don't. Could this mean that like multiple personality disorder this person has created his sickness?
Gypsum, plaster, brick, wood, steel are inert. If you can't handle these natural substances then too bad. Fate is not always kind. Life is not fair. Perhaps you have a psychological problem. Maybe a psychiatrist would be your best bet.
Erm, wood anyone? Bricks and mortar? Glass?
What wood? Plywood (flooring substrate) and press board are all made with really nasty glues.. that give off formaldehyde, among other things, for years and years. Bricks are made of god knows what in some cases, bonding and strengthening agents are used in the formula, and these too can give off gasses or dusts that are toxic to people with allergies. Mortar has really nasty things in it.. which again people can be allergic too, and to seal it you need to use paint.. which also can cause reactions in people who cant deal with certain fumes.
The fact that the guy is leaning towards adobe makes me think he is allergic to something that is pretty commonly used as a "safe" bonding or strenghtening agent.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
In the near future, environmental problems will come home to roost - a direct result of the short-sighted environmental policies persued by both governments and corporations.
You may dismiss this as "tree-hugging BS", that's your perogative, but illnesses such as childhood asthma, leukemia, allergies, etc are all on the rise. And, as much as they try to hide it, pollution does maim and kill thousands, if not millions, every year.
Arguably, modern medicine is to blame as well. By curing the sick and the weak, modern medicine has prolonged the lives of people who would have otherwise died (including me). Don't get me wrong, I'm not against treating sick people but it's an inescapable fact that by allowing the weak to live you're weakening the gene pool.
Harsh facts but the facts all the same.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Nope, I'm afraid. Any foodstuff containing aspartame has to be labelled "Contains a source of phenylalanine", which it does. This is because sufferers of phenylketonuria are likely to die if they continually ingest it. More info here
Co-incidentally, my wife gets severe migraine if she takes anything containing aspartame. This works regardless of whether she's aware of the contents or not ....
(Controversially, the then commissioner of the FDA, Dr. Arthur Hayes, approved the general use of aspartame for the Searle corporation. Three months later, he was working for Burson-Marsteller, Searle's advertising agency. Co-incidence??)
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
As far as "Formaldehyde and Methanol" being such a problem, let me remind you that an eating an apple releases much more methanol into your system than the equal in your tea.
Major difference being they release it into your stomach.. the bond in nutrasweet is specifically designed to go to the brain before it does that.
I work with a chemist, who is pretty high up here in chemistry. That was his take on it. I'll believe him over a PR study by a company that is trying to make money from me. Saccharin was "safe" too. So is TYlenol.. as long as you dont mind the odd coma and liver damage.
And actually for the most part I think ADD and ADHD are just names for normal kids who want to sedate for our instutitional learning facilities (I do believe there are some true cases, but the vast majority).
I can tell you for a fact that diet reactive ADD/ADHD exists. Hell.. I can prove it if you want me to hang out in your living room for about a week and you have a supply of pixie sticks around. I dont doubt that a hell of a lot of the current diagnoses are just kids that the system does not have time to deal with, but then again, I dont "believe" in the use of ritalin and other drugs to deal with a neruological disorder that can be effectively combated through proper diet and learning to deal with it.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
I grew up with this sort of mindset presented as the normal way of life. My mother self-diagnosed herself with EI, MCS, Lupus, and other assorted disorders which never seemed to be confirmed by traditional medicine. This was always presented by her as proof of the shortcomings of the allopathic community.
:-) Strangely enough, the longer this went on, the less and less sensitive I became to my environment, to the food I ate, to the air I breathed. Now, as I sit here at my glue-ridden wooden desk in my carpeted office, breathing the air of one of the worst polluted cities in the country, the transformation is complete. I understand perfectly that people in my mother's mindset will say that I have "deadened my senses" to the surrounding toxins. My opinion is that, like any exercise in biodiversity, increased exposure to a variety of envioronmental substances makes one's system more able to cope with foreign invasions. The attempt to sterilize our living environment while growing up simply made us react more strongly to any small variation in that environment.
We lived out in the middle of the country, in a house made with a purposeful absence of traditional building materials. Non-treated wood, cedar shakes, etc. In spite of this, my mother seemed to grow constantly more sensitive to her environment, and put more and more safeguards in place to attempt to purify it. Ionic air filters were everywhere, including one in the car to attempt to reduce the effects of hydrocarbon emissions. She pursued a macrobiotic diet in order to attempt to balance her body and eliminate toxins taken in through food. Nothing seemed to improve the situation. Strangely(?) enough, as the years went by, both my sister and I both started exhibiting similar sets of symptoms.
12 years later, I have a very strong feeling about what actually happened during that time of our lives. After I moved out, I started presenting a plethora of external insults to my body in the form of poor environmental conditions, a [comparably speaking] junk food diet, and ingestion of various chemical substances. I called it "college."
As an addendum, my mother is still attempting to isolate herself from the known universe. In spite of this, she is still having the same difficulties. Given my experience over the past decade, I really have to wonder if the cure is a substantial portion of the disease.
And doctors know everything...
In 1967 I was advised by an MD to start smoking because it would help my asthma. Studies since then have shown the hazards of smoke and secondhand smoke. I smoked for 17 years after that, have been quit for more than 20, but still have asthma.
Asthma is quite often triggered by the very chemical pollution your AAFP article would seem to deny. No, I don't have clinical trials, just my own experience. When the pollution is low, my asthma is tolerable, when the pollution is high, my asthma is painful. When I get near fresh paint or other forms of pollution my lungs start hurting. This is not psychosomatic at all, its a real pain and goes away when the source is removed amd my lungs have had a chance to clear.
BTW, several allergists have said that you can't be allergic to chemicals. Go figure.
I'm glad you're healthy and can dismiss the rest of us that have health problems. May you never lose your health, but I hope a little compassion comes your way.
There are three large cohorts, the Vietnam Vets, the Gulf War Syndrome, and the Japan nerve gas subway survivors. All three have Chemical Sensitivity symptoms. Essentially, pesticide is a toned down nerve gas. It is oil soluble. It is designed to kill stuff. Nerve gas and pesticide is the same chemical family. Since it is oil soluble it is difficult for the body to excrete. And yes it acts as an immune system adjuvant spurring the immune system into hyper alertness. When we bombed Saddam in the last war we bombed his chemical agent factories. Our troops were down wind. Thousands of nerve gas sensors went off. BUT the US claims that these nerve gas sensors were defective. Why is the same nerve gas sensor still in our arsenal??? Why hasn't the manufacturer been sued?? Even the expensive gas spec and mass spec loaded on pick up trucks detected nerve gas. During the 1950's the breast cancer rate was 1 in 20. When I was in Med School a decade ago it was 1 in 11. Today, the breast cancer rate is 1 in 8. There is a Long Island Breast cancer cluster. WHY? Isn't there some curiosity, that the animals that live in polluted waters have all kinds of tumors??? Part of the cover up occurs when you follow the money. The liability runs very high. Lawyers are called in. Has anyone watched "A Civil Action"??
http://www.google.fi/search?q=aspartame&ie=UTF-8&o e=UTF-8&hl=fi&btnG=Google-haku&lr=
yeah you shouldn't make assumptions on what comes off from google straight away.
however, there are studies that DO show aspartame as harmful, it tastes like crap, and has no real reason to be used instead of sugar(yeah sugar has energy but drink water then it's not like your going to get rid of fatty ass by drinking alternatives, eh, and they're just as bad to teeth as well, dissolving them).
the biggest gist is that it got through the check system by weaseling a bit.
hmm... i wonder why the more caring types of my family stopped drinking sweetened stuff(educated in medical, reading studies occasionally).
7000 as a number is just absurd too.
"Of the 90 non-industry-sponsored studies, 83 (92%) identified one or more problems with aspartame. Of the 7 studies which did not find a problems, 6 of those studies were conducted by the FDA. Given that a number of FDA officials went to work for the aspartame industry immediately following approval (including the former FDA Commissioner), many consider these studies to be equivalent to industry-sponsored research."
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I work for an environmental laboratory that does testing for this very thing. This guy's whining aside, many folks' houses are more polluted than the outdoors.
There are quite a few factors that can cause illness to those living in such a place. Many older paints contain lead, older carpeting and padding can give off fumes of organic solvents, a lot of older linoleum and drywall contains asbestos, mold can grow in moist areas and squirt bits of mold particles all over, basements contain radon in many areas, oh and it clings to smoke/dust particles which lets it lodge in your lungs and sit there emitting harmful ionizing radiation directly into lung tissue. Granted, much of this stuff is just allergens, but constant allergies can lower your immune capability. And some of this stuff is downright toxic or carcinogenic.
Get your house tested. It really doesn't cost that much. Do it sooner rather than later, especially if you have children...this isn't a plug to drum up business for my lab, you really will be amazed at what kind of crap is in your home.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Also, BTW, "toxic" here is a relative term. Toxicity is the level at which a certain potentially harmful thing begins to have negative effects. Every person has a different tolerance to a given substance based on a host of factors (genetics, prior exposure to that and related substances, current/prior disease states, current/prior injuries, etc); what is toxic to you may have no effect on me.
This guy (and people like him) have a decreased tolerance to a large number of substances for some unknown reason. So, although you may have lived in your house for decades with no ill effects, the case will likely be different for him.
This condition really intrigues me...it makes me wonder what could happen to make someone sensitive like this. There has to be a phsyiological/biochemical reason for it.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
Fiberglass is toxic. Right. Because, you know, it's made of glass.
And... oooh... better watch out for that silicone. Women only heave it around in their chests for 20 years at a stretch. That's a real killer.