Are You Home Sick?

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If you find a solid match in both symptoms and sources, and your analysis of your home turns up some suggestive patterns, you should test for the substance to see if it is present in your home.

CHEMICAL SENSITIVITY

Until recently, those afflicted were seen as physiological misfits.

CHEMICAL SENSITIVITY HAS COME largely as a surprise to medical science. When extensive testing of chemicals began back in the 1960s, toxicologists found little evidence of profound health effects from low doses of most substances they tested. Laboratory animals usually showed an admirable degree of tolerance. No matter that the animals' life spans were too short to demonstrate long-term effects—or that, of the 50,000 to 60,000 chemicals in common use, less than 2% had been thoroughly tested.

Ignorance being blindness (if not bliss), when a few people had unusually strong reactions to comparatively small concentrations of chemicals such as formaldehyde, chemical sensitivity was thought to be quite rare. Individuals so afflicted were viewed as unfortunate physiological misfits, people whose fallout from the human race was lamentable but probably unavoidable. Fortunately, since more and more people are now showing sensitivity, health experts' understanding of the problem is becoming considerably more sophisticated.

Perhaps the number one attitudinal breakthrough has been the realization that most chemically sensitive people aren't born that way. Though they may have enzymatic deficiencies that predispose them toward it, they develop their sensitivity after, sometimes long after, birth. This commonly occurs following extended exposure to low levels of one or more toxins, a single massive exposure to one toxin or exposure in conjunction with a major injury or infectious illness.

In simple terms, what happens is that the body's immune and detoxification systems begin to work incorrectly or inadequately. The immune system—consisting of a number of substances in the blood—may overreact to small doses of toxins, or the inner-cell enzymatic system that normally removes toxic substances may become ineffective, allowing accumulation of toxins.

It might be formaldehyde, phenol or dust mite antigen that triggers the sensitivity, but once sensitized, an individual may have severe reactions to a number of toxins in concentrations almost too small to measure.

TESTING

TESTING FOR A FEW OF THE MOST hazardous chemicals—notably formaldehyde, lead, combustion products and a variety of toxins in water—is fairly easy, accurate and economical. And an allergist might be able to check for populations of fungi and dust mites or at least determine your sensitivity to these things. But more esoteric contaminants require sophisticated equipment and expertise to measure. Check your yellow pages for environmental consultants, or use the listings in the Healthy House Catalog (see "Further Reading" for ordering information). The following are a few recognized sources for mail-order testing:

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Athena Thompson

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