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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."
Arcosanti is housing project designed and developed by Paolo Soleric
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Erm, wood anyone? Bricks and mortar? Glass?
Having looked at the site, I can't help thinking that there might be a psychological element to "Environmental illness".
The article poses the question: What Is Environmental Illness? It then goes off about Northern Exposure, which was a very funny television show, but is not a well established authority on immunological disorders.
It's a psychosomatic condition. Get a subscription for paxil and go the fuck outside.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
...too lazy to dig deep enough, here's a description of the illness from the site:
What Is Environmental Illness?
In 1990 the CBS television series Northern Exposure introduced America to a little known community of disabled people through the character of Mike Monroe, a lawyer afflicted by an illness known as MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity) who sought refuge in a peculiar geodesic dome home on the outskirts of the eclectic Alaskan community featured in the series. Mike was 'allergic to the 20th Century' and suffered a variety of symptoms in response to the most minor exposures to chemicals. Though writers of this series took much liberty with the facts of this ailment, the essential social condition of people with this illness was well portrayed, in particular the alienation and social anxiety associated with having an illness that no one really comprehended, least of all those in the medical community who would normally be relied on for understanding and compassion.
It is unclear precisely when MCS first emerged because misdiagnosis and politically motivated denial have consistently accompanied it to the present day. But over the 1980s physicians throughout the industrialized nations of the world began reporting a steadily growing number of cases of people developing a host of chronic symptoms, sometimes vague, sometimes plain, and sometimes dramatically life-threatening, which seemed to have no obvious pathology other than an association with the presence of common household industrial products or pollution. Symptoms ranged from things one might normally associate with conventional flu or allergy -such as asthmatic, skin, and gastrointestinal reactions- to neurological effects both subtle and dramatic -such as cognitive difficulty, numbness, trembling, twitching and spasms, and partial to total paralysis. Some patients claimed sensitivity to things well beyond the conventional clinical sphere, such as electromagnetic fields produced by appliances and electrical wiring. And there were few symptoms any patients had consistently in common other than a general progressive malaise dubbed 'chronic fatigue' and a vague chronic muscle or joint pain labeled Fibromyalgia. Many could trace the onset of their illness to a trigger exposure to some specific chemical product which resulted in a sudden flu-like illness and rapid break-down, though therafter their reactions would come in response to exposures to a vast assortment of things, including foods and sometimes natural contaminants like pollen, fungal spores, dusts, and natural fragrances.
Most MCS suffers tended to succumb to the condition in mid adult-hood and are often female with middle-class backgrounds. In the US there is a preponderance of them from northern and eastern urban/suburban regions, suggesting an association with general environmental pollution levels. Male cases were rarer and more often associated with specific industrial chemical contamination or industy-related pre-cursor illnesses such as the Systemic Candidiasis which is common among brewery workers. (GWS suffers, as noted below, are veterans and mostly male, their trigger exposure related to whatever they were subjected to in the Gulf War) Children were the rarest group but also a rapidly growing one, due perhaps to an increasingly sedentary and sequestered lifestyle that keeps children exposed to more indoor air pollution coupled to a steadily decreasing quality of diet for children in industrialized countries.
These cases proved immediately politically controversial because of the implication that they could be related to ubiquitous consumer products. These 'human canaries', as some physicians had dubbed them, were a potential threat to corporate interests and the government agencies charged with establishing safety and health standards. Thus there was a tendency by the medical establishment to at first dismiss the growing number of reports and then to promote a psychosomatic explanation that effectively blamed the patient -or the
Steps to finding a non-toxic home:
1. MOVE OUT OF NEW JERSEY
The rest will be much easier once step 1 is complete.
Well, without building a treehouse and moving there.
Anything chemically processed is a potential source of 'toxins', not to mention possible natural toxins that may get trapped in your house instead of floating around in nature.
This quest, like the quest for a bacteria free home (lead by those lysol nuts), are not realistic.
What you can do is get outside and exercise/experience the real world more often, and this exposure to a wide variety of things should help one's body recover from being sheltered inside a closed system that contains toxins.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
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.
Studies of such "syndromes" as sensitivity to EMF have revealed that the people in question are utterly able to distinguish the presense of radio waves or whatnot. It's bogus -- they're scaring themselves to death.
I quote from The American Academy of Family Physicians website:Sorry to be insensitive, but until I see some better evidence for this being a real disorder, I'm going to assume that he's just another crackpot hypochondriac.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
Everything I've read about "Environmental Illness" suggests that it's psychosomatic. The amount of money this guy is spending on a special house and medical quackery could buy an awful lot of psychotherapy.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
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
What is "Environmental Illness"? I've never heard it before in my life.
Basically, from what I have read, it is one step below bubble-boy on the allergen list. Instead of being suceptible to germs, these people are susceptible to gasses and chomicals that most of us tolerate fine.
What does "toxic home" mean in this context? I've never thought of lampshades as dangerous. I'm left guessing here.
It means that every piece of anything chemically processed that you have in your home slowly breaks down over time, and gives off noxious chemicals. Everything from formaldehyde to radon.
Most of us dont notice, but it apparently makes some people _very_ sick. Couple this with todays "need" to make homes virtually air tight, and you have a place that makes reactive people really, really sick.
Obviously I can look these all up (and I will). But any other reporting source would've explained these concepts in some detail.
He kinda does on a another page.. but you have to dig a bit to find it. It apparently involves moose, alaska, and nOrthern Exposure.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Your mother is a crackpot. and she is bringing you over to that side.
Yes, MANY things can release som nasty gasses. but your wild ass remark about tyvek sealing it in is proof of a crackpot logic. Does your house have doors and windows? how about a properly installed heating system with the correct fresh air intake and heat exchanger? if the house was correctly designed you change over the air in the home at least 2-3 times and hour.
The new home can have trace amounts of nasties in it's atmosphere, but by the time you move into it, a gas chromatagraph cannot even detect it. and it is alot more sensitive than anything you can gain access to "measure" how dangerous a home is.
My father was a contractor, In college chemistry classes I wrote a thesis on such crackpot theories, and using standard science proved that it's all a bunch of hooey in a properly built home.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
Your assumption that there is a "huge jump in lung cancer in the last 20 years" is wrong, or at best misleading.
Age-adjusted lung cancer rates have declined significantly from 1990-1999--age-adjusted rates are the only ones that are really worth looking at, they're what for instance the CDC and other bodies use since they account for increases in lifespan. Preliminary data for 2000-2002 seems to indicate this trend is continuing. If there is an increase over the last 20 years it's because an earlier increase (1983-1989) hasn't been wiped out yet.
Remember that cancer rates lag smoking rates, too, so if smoking was halved today that would show up more and more over the next decade(s) rather than showing up immediately.
http://seer.cancer.gov is one good resource for this data.
Sumner
rage, rage against the dying of the light
Nitpicking note--germs are not allergens, and bubble-boy syndrome (severe combined immune deficiency--SCID, IIRC) is a result of a person's inability to produce and maintain a healthy population of immune cells. Allergic reactions typically look and feel like a severe overreaction by the immune system--something that you would never see from a bubble-boy sufferer.
It means that every piece of anything chemically processed that you have in your home slowly breaks down over time, and gives off noxious chemicals. Everything from formaldehyde to radon.
Nit number two. Radon exposure in the home is never the result of chemically processed materials breaking down in the home. Radon gas is formed by the nuclear decay of natural radioisotopes in soil. (Since natural clays are used to make bricks, there may be slightly higher radiation levels in brick buildings, as well.)
Most of us dont notice, but it apparently makes some people _very_ sick. Couple this with todays "need" to make homes virtually air tight, and you have a place that makes reactive people really, really sick.
The airtight buildings of today do concentrate allergens while often simultaneously drying out mucous membranes that would normally keep these nasties out of our lungs, "Sick Building Syndrome" (SBS) may result. Often, the cause of SBS can be traced to one or two contaminants in the environment--moulds in the air system, formaldehyde releases from fresh carpet adhesives, and so forth.
"Multiple Chemical Sensitivity" (MCS) is a disorder characterized by extreme sensitivity to multiple environmental toxins. MCS is still far from being recognized by the medical establishment at large. Here is a good, balanced summary from the American Academy of Family Physicians. Of particular note is the fact that the AMA, the American College of Physicians, the International Society of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, and American Academy of Allergy and Immunology have rejected MCS as an organic illness--but then, they could be wrong.
~Idarubicin
I have built a few "Healthy Houses" for clients that were both environmentally sensitive and for non sensitive people.
The simple fact of the matter is that buildings are made of stuff, and some of this stuff gets on our skin and into our lungs. If the stuff is bad for you, why use it. This problem is worse in energy efficient houses.
Just the same as we know now that smoking is bad for you so:
It makes sense to avoid building materials that produce toxic dust (silicone, asbestos, fiberglass)
It makes sense to avoid materials that offgas formadehyde gas or other noxious organic compounds. Materials such as particle board, cheap carpet, urea formaldehyde foam insulation offgas significant amounts of formaldehyde, formaldehyde is good for some things, but not increasing your lifespan.
It makes sense to minimize the potential growth of toxic or allergic natural pests such as mold, dust mites, spiders, ants and wasps.
nothing is real
It's a fact that the air we breathe, even in the cleanest environments is composed of a large percentage of free radicals. That's a basic fact of life on Earth.
The people who created the original microbial test for cancer later became its loudest critics when it was found that almost anything in excess can cause cancer. The air itself is toxic without any form of man made pollution.
I'm all for prolonging life through stem cell reasarch, cloning, genetic repairs, whatever. But trying to avoid, rather than repair, cellular damage is ridiculous. You can't do it.
Playing the blame game just keeps money in lawyers pockets. Don't participate in that crap.
every piece of anything chemically processed
You mean like every object you can buy? Last time I checked, everything was a chemical. Better not wash those Oranges off, after all, water is a chemical!!
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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.
Okay. I agree. The author, in all likelihood, has a kind of psychosomatic disorder.
So, how does this translate to 'crackpot hypochondriac'?
Let me be more specific. I believe that there are a great many common illnesses that are psychosomatic in nature. However, the pain is real. This guy is in pain, its clear to see. He's pursued this untenable solution to his pain for most of his adult life, according to the site. He's endured a fair amount of ridicule for thinking he's 'allergic to the 20th century'.
Just think about what that must be like. He believes firmly that the world is ignoring his pleas. Which is true, because his pleas are bogus. He doesn't know that. He just gets labelled 'crackpot'. He has no way out, really.
I guess, maybe just a little more sensitivity, guys? He may be nuts, but he's also sick, and I don't see the difference between this and any other mental disorder. If a paranoid schizophrenic thinks the world is after them, we don't (hopefully) decry them as purposefully nuts. We try and help them. If helping this guy find an adobe hut will make him think he's better I say give him an adobe hut.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Well, wish any of them luck in building a house without a well-engineered wall system - vapor barrier and permable wrap - Tyvek is not airtight - it is a liquid barrier bus allows moisture to migrate back out of the insualted wall, while a sealed barrier makes sure the moisture stays out of the house interior. Leave these two out and good luck fighting off the mold that will be inside the walls in short time. Short of straw-bale adobe, it's pretty necessary. Also - don't seal the ground with a well-engineered basement or barrier or vent system, and you're blind to radon infiltration, which is not a syndrome - it is a proven and measurable health risk.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
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"??
...By indulging his hypochondriac fantasies. I glanced over his autobiography, and here's what I think (I am not a mental health professional, but I know plenty of mildly crazy people)
1. He's had trouble getting a job because he keeps on bringing up his fantasy 'handicap' (though he surely believes it's real), and he finds no employer wants to deal with a handicapped IT person.... I think it would be more accurate to say no company wants to deal with a crazy employee in any proffession.
2. His entire autobiography, he paints himself a victim of this 'syndrome.' (and peer abuse, and being overweight) Never anything more than that. True, his weblog is about 'non-toxic' housing, so he may want to keep it on topic, but it really seems to be more of an entire 'pity me' diatribe than a tale of his life thus far. Certainly he takes no responsibility for the over-eating and inactivity that made him fat, and is responsible for his low stamina. (News flash: Fat people can't move fast, or far. Remember, KE=M*V^2!)
3. I bet his doting, single mom raised him to think he was always sick- ever heard of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy ? Tell a kid something long enough, and he's likely to believe it. Drag him around to all sorts of doctors starting in infancy, and you might start to think you can never be healthy.
MCS, as many other posters have pointed out, is a fantasy illness. Michael Fumento, a respected health writer, has written a number of articles on the subject that can be found here. Incidentally, I reccomend browsing through his articles for any other topics that might be of interest to you.
So here's my (albeit non-proffessional) advice to this gentleman:
A. Stop eating.
B. Start Exercising. Cardio-Vascular and weight training. Do it till you drop. Guess what? You'll find that every week you keep it up, you'll last just a little bit longer. I'm not slim (6'1", 255lbs so not grossly obese either) but I've started exercising regularly- trust me, it won't be long before you start noticing the improvements. Maybe weeks. The fatter you are, the more you need to start right now.
C. STFU. really. No one cares about your problems, except fellow hypochondriacs who are looking for reciprical support on their bullshit illnesses. Any given ailment can be exploited for a very limited amount of sympathy. Coming up with new ailments all the time will just piss off the people around you, and turn sympathy into mild disgust.
Buddy, it seems to me your mom screwed you up from the start, before you even had a chance to know better. Blame the doctors for prescribing too many anti-biotics? Blame your mom for bringing you to so many doctors and insisting on medication. Up until the mid 90's, anti-biotics, especially weak ones, were the classic 'go-away' prescription, since doctors can't exactly prescribe sugar pills to crazy patients, or patients with crazy moms.
Oh yeah, the bad thing about over prescribing anti-biotics is that it makes the pathogens more resistant- they don't do much to you except a little diarehhia, because they kill helpful intestinal bacteria. But you must of missed that news report.
Your mom screwed you up. It's high time you got over it.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
If you are collecting SSI, you are supposed to be disabled and unable to work.
If you are capable of managing a construction project and being a landlord, you are not disabled an unable to work.
Why don't you post your name so someone can turn you in for defrauding the social welfare system.
Fucking cheat.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
does this mean that all MCS patients are just autoimmune patients waiting for a Dx??? No. Nor does it mean that MCS does or doesn't exist as a separate medical entity... but it does mean that there are certainly cases where allergies and sensitivities can be induced by other causes.
Incidentally, there are also illnesses that are actually being proven to exist, like fibromyalgia, where the complex list of ailments is also real... again, NOT to be taken as evidence that every ailment with such a laundry list of symptoms is genuine yet unproven, in fact this is the exception, rather than the rule. This list of ailments comes up with almost any new toxin. It came up with"Electricity Allergy," where the patient claims to have an allery to Electromagnetic fields which can even break the devices that bear the fields. Again, cases where the patient does the describing and the diagnosis. *shaking head* Doesn't anybody believe in double blind studies any more??
i hope this fellow gets better. I hope that people stop referring to empirical- science based medicine as 'allopathic,' which is a label that only self-stylised 'holistic' pseudomedics seem to use. I just wanted to point out the exception or two where the symptoms are diagnosable, distinct, testable, and can be demonstrated not to be psychosomatic. I didn't read anything that leads me to believe that he's had all the tests to rule such things out. Medicine is NO PLACE for shoddy science!!!!
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
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.
Don't forget about Dihydrogen Monoxide! This is one of the most dangerous chemicals in existence, yet it's used in just about every processed food there is. Stop the madness!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
MCS is kind of aligned with the same people who feel that radio waves harm them.
Now, allergies to about everything, individually, _are_ considered medically viable and clinically verifiable. But MCS, which proposes that one disease makes you allergic to almost all chemicals, doesn't seem to pass muster.
Here is a compilation of views of medical associations towards MCS. Nobody says it is complete bunk, but everybody agrees that there aren't any good studies that proves it does exist.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
This guy's site is not doing much to help those who are environmentally sensitive. He's got all the warning signs of an chronic hypochondriac (read his autobiography; he goes out of his way to portray himself as a martyr and a victim of pretty much everyone and everything he's ever encountered). I think he's got some serious attention issues, and will prejudice the casual viewer against against ES sufferers.
Another poster in this thread recommended the movie safe, and I couldn't agree more. ES syndrome is a complex, daunting problem that is often equal parts biology and psychology; you can't treat the psychological factors without giving some relief for the physical symptoms, but the problems will never truly go away until you address the mental component of the disorder. A patient often has some kind of severe sociopathology (extremely needy and demanding of attention, or fearful of social interaction), and attendant phobias or OC fixations. It's pretty amazing to see somebody break out in hives when you just *tell* them that there are painters in the other half of the building; this is a disorder of mind and body that Western medicine's reductionist approach is more or less powerless to address.
Everyone nowadays is on a real kick. They think that they can diagnose every single illness and problem with themselves. Without any knowledge other than what the internet says or a book says. Well I have one thing to say to them. Stop trying to diagnose yourself!
One important thing was said to me during my psychopathology class and it has stuck with me ever since. (Roughly):
"You are going to learn about many different psychological diseases, their symptoms and causes. Just because you learn about it though, doesn't mean you are qualified to diagnose yourself. Your problems always seem amplified to yourself, so you never really get to see the actual picture of what you are doing and what's happening to you. So, right now I am going to tell you all, you very likely aren't bipolar, don't have any personality disorders, aren't schizophrenic, and don't have any of the diseases the book talks about. If you feel you do have any of them, go and see a professional and don't diagnose/treat yourself. It's that simple. You will avoid a lot of hardship that way."
Well, I think that applies to all of these people who think their bodies are hosts for bug larvae, or people who are determined that every big evil corporation is actively trying to kill them, or that their small problems in their life are so huge that the world must be collapsing and the sky must be falling...
You likely aren't sick, but if you honestly feel you are, go see a qualified professional and get it checked out properly. At least that way you can try to find the root of the real problem, and not live your life in fear and horror of these imaginary deamons that are haunting you. Stop attacking these windmills blindly.
Also, I would like to point out that there isn't a giant conspiracy orchestrated by the doctors and psychologists to steal your money and keep you sick/kill you.
~ kjrose
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.
My wife is from Cambodia. I've seen first hand what NOT using antibiotics and NOT using chemicals to preserve their food and NOT using hand sanitizers can do (beggars with limbs rotting from their bodies in markets, children with parasites visible under their skin, etc.).....I say *our* way of doing things is in EVERY way superior to the alternative of people who live "naturally". Take a trip to a third world shithole sometime and have a look. I agree there are bad effects from using antibiotics, preservatives, "chemicals", and overmedication....but perversly to not use them is even worse.