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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."
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)
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?
Exactly. It's quack science.
Anything from a peer-reviewed medical journal? Or is "the Man" keeping them down?
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.
BZZT:! Wrong answer. Gypsum is bad for anyone who has respiratory issues, because it is such a fine dust, and anyone with any kind of silica allergy has serioius problems with it.
There are several woods that are downright toxic.
Line a room with Cedar and make the house airtight and see how long you survive. The gas given off by it is not only toxic to Moths, it is toxic to people also. But the little blocks you keep in your closet dont release enough to sicken you, unless you are highly reactive to it.
Bricks are also not inert all the time. The JIRR
had an article on a brick in Boston that was carrying syphillus. (yes, that was meant to be humorous, but its true).
Yeah.. I know i'm feeding a troll.. but your misinformation is staggering.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
What wood? Plywood (flooring substrate) and press board are all made with really nasty glues.
Well don't use fricking plywood or press board then!
Bricks are made of god knows what in some cases
Bricks are made of clay, baked at very high temperatues. There really isn't much more to it than that.
Mortar has really nasty things in it
Really, like, erm, lime, silica and sand?
Where do you buy your building supplies, for flips sake, Dr. Evil?
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.
Nutrasweet aka Aspartame IS safe. My dad works for the Merisant corporation which makes Equal, the largest consumer of Nutrasweet. If Nutrasweet is not safe, then certainly the solution to the problem will be darwinism. My dad and all of the other executives drink the stuff with every beverage. If they're at a restaurant that doesn't have Nutrasweet, they request it, and so on. All of the studies have shown there is no link to aspartame and any problems, and it has been one of the most studied substances on the planet. Something like 7000 studies I believe. And Merisant is NOT paying anybody off.
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.
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 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
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.