My partner has severe allergies and will break out in hives when exposed to many fragrances so we've cut them out of everything. We avoid most cleaning products and stick to water, salt, baking soda, vinegar, and peroxide for most household cleaning.

My MIL is very desensitized to fragrances and my partner has asked her on multiple occasions not to "freshen up" the house before we visit. My MIL swears up and down that she doesn't but the moment you walk in the door it's like a punch in the face. My partner unfortunately will break out in hives and immediately becomes congested.

normalize_relation(OP.MIL, OP.partner) == partner.mother

Right?

So, your partner's mom uses products that she knows will cause an allergic reaction to her kid.

Kid asks not to use said products for fear of allergic reaction.

Kid enters mom's abode.

Kid has immediate allergic reaction.

So I have to ask-- what is your MIL's reaction to clearly causing her kid to predictably suffer every time you visit?

I also have to ask-- why do you two keep visiting?

My partner is quite literally allergic to everything so it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation a lot of times.

> My partner is quite literally allergic to everything

... and now research is showing those two statements may be cause and effect to some degree, ironically.

I asked my mom to switch to unscented fabric softener and it took MONTHS for her clothes to stop smelling like being punched in the face with a bouquet. It's amazing how desensitized people are, and how long it takes those fragrances to dissipate.

Yes! It's amazing how the smell persists subsequent washes.

My own mother had a dismissive attitude towards dietary intolerances and even basic hygiene sometimes.

One of the strongest smells in a nursing home isn't unchanged diapers it is that staph infection festering under a neglected old lady's underbreast area. Very infrequently checked due to modesty issues and caregivers trying not to offend and respect her decency but it does have to be monitored and checked routinely because that skin area stays moist and chafes against the folds and I've seen too many elderly women in severe pain from their bra straps chaffing the skin off here and getting infected.

Men of hackernews, check your elderly mothers underbreast area and make sure her caregivers are routinely keeping it clean and dry!!

This comment brought to you by a very sweet, very neglected old lady who we took out of a pretty bad situation in a care home and I will never forget that smell and the shame and plea for help in her eyes as I assessed what exactly was the source of her various ailments. And she was nonverbal so couldn't complain nobody was doing their damn jobs.

Bicarbonate soda is an amazing product: we've been using it instead of washing-up liquid for our daughter's cutlery and crockery. Also to clean the bath before she goes in.

5 years ago,we bought a sofa, which came with a massive stench because of VOCs and fire retardants it gets soaked into.. After we complained, they sent in a guy,who pretended he can't smell shit and suggested going to the doctor for allergies.. to my knowledge, California is one of very few places, where furniture foam doesn't need to be soaked in harmful chemicals.

Now if you want to really kick up the cleaning potential you put on gloves and bake the baking soda turning it into Sodium Carbonate which is an adequate replacement for lye in many household uses from cleaning to making pretzels.

I used to be like your partner. A whiff of perfume would trigger nasal congestion, itchy eyes, and irritable mood. It got worse over 5 years. It became unbearable, interfering with my work and personal life. I consulted with an allergy doctor. They told me it was incurable and probably won't get better, just avoid perfume.

I started doing my own research. I found a study result [0] showing that perfume sensitivity is psycho-somatic. Then I learned stress-reduction techniques and used them to cure myself. Specifically, whenever I smelled perfume, I would practice slow breathing, go for a short walk, or get a drink of water. Gradually, I stopped feeling stress after smelling perfume. After about one month, I used lightly-perfumed (normal) hand soap at my friend's home and felt no discomfort afterward. My life improved a lot.

Allergy is a very specific physical process involving the immune system. Doctors have reliable methods to measure this process. Perfume sensitivity is something different. People develop emotional habits of reacting with fear when smelling perfume. When the body enters that triggered emotional state, it releases stress hormones. The stress hormones cause the symptoms of perfume sensitivity.

Your partner can cure their-self, as I cured myself four years ago. After they do it, please reply here so I can point others to this thread.

[0] http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(06)01696-4/abst...

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00022470.1969.10...

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242146083_GRAS_Flav...

I think "rationality" is not any kind of preventative against getting caught up in this. It's a matter of being in a community, and everyone in the community saying "yeah I discovered I had this problem, it's actually way more common than doctors realize and it had these symptoms, and fixing it improved my life so much." So then you start to think about whether you have had anything that resembles those symptoms, and your brain wheels start to go on the possibility that all your life issues could be solved if you just eliminated whatever it is. Pretty soon you do have the symptoms, you see them every time you encounter this thing. Why didn't you notice it before? You must have been desensitized... and so on.

To be clear, I'm not making light of the issue, and I'm definitely not willing to say that this is what is happening to anyone in this thread in particular, but by my observation it's an extremely common problem, one I've fallen into myself before. I literally do not let myself listen to anecdata about allergies, because I know I'll fall for it again. This is all sort of reminiscent of England's famous "catching" psychological issues, or the betwitched children of Salem.

Your comment seems to imply that psycho-somatic symptoms are not real symptoms and people who suffer from them are behaving irrationally. If so, you are incorrect.

Psycho-somatic symptoms are real measurable physical problems in the body that are triggered by the brain. They are not imagined problems. For example, my perfume sensitivity triggered real nasal congestion. You could hook up a nasal flow meter and record data showing that my nostrils were blocked. For people with chronic lower back pain, you could connect a sensor to the pain nerves and measure the pain signals going from the lower back muscles into the spinal column.

Suffering from a psycho-somatic disorder does not imply that the person is rational or irrational. Psycho-somatic problems arise from everyday life situations. For example, my own perfume sensitivity developed over a year of high pressure at the office. My desk was near the women's restroom. Several times an hour, people wearing perfume would walk by my desk to use the restroom, and then walk by again a few minutes later. I became distracted when I smelled their perfume. I would respond to the distraction by desperately forcing myself to concentrate. When concentrating was difficult, I felt more stress. Gradually, my brain developed an automatic response: smell perfume -> feel anxiety and stress. Unfortunately, this was a self-reinforcing habit. After I recognized the root cause, I was able to un-learn the emotional habit and cure the psycho-somatic disorder.

Your tone implies that people develop psycho-somatic disorders after "falling for" some false idea. That is incorrect. Some would consider it extremely condescending and would take offense. When a person suffers from excruciating lower back pain, they are not "falling for" the idea that they have a back injury. They are just suffering. They try to understand why they are suffering. "I have a bad back" is a reasonable explanation. The knowledge of the most common cause of lower back pain is not yet widespread: that lower back pain is usually caused by subconscious tensing of muscles. Please re-examine your bias about psycho-somatic disorders. They are real symptoms suffered by rational people.

I assure you that your mother is suffering real symptoms. They are very likely not psycho-somatic. I commend her relentless search for root cause and cure. You could help her: Take her to consult with experts, help her objectively record her symptoms, help her systematically test different hypotheses and interventions, find a fun fitness class and attend it with her, research healthy recipes and cook them together, and make sure she takes enough vitamin D3. My own mother developed cancer and there was little I could do to help her.

No, I was intending to do exactly the opposite. Sorry that that was unclear. My only point was that the cure is entirely a mental one, not that the suffering is fake. I suspect that you can develop symptoms by being around other people who have the symptoms. That doesn't mean your experiences aren't legitimate. As I said in the comment, I myself have had this experience. In my case it started with imagining things about my past experiences, but quickly turned into a real ordeal for me.

> I assure you that your mother is suffering real symptoms. They are very likely not psycho-somatic.

I agree, and we've tried to help her. She unfortunately has a pretty strong skepticism of traditional medicine and has an extremely unhealthy lifestyle that could more than explain most of her symptoms, but has chosen to micro-focus on the things people on her Facebook feed tell her are her problems. So she says, for example, that she has pain in her gut and gets headaches whenever she eats gluten. This is something she'd never complained of before, and a test for celiac disease turned up nothing. But still she insists. My only explanation is not that she's pretending to suffer, but rather that she's created the gluten intolerance herself. That it's a mental problem. Next time I visit, she'll probably be back to eating bread again, this time totally convinced something else is going on.

https://davidsuzuki.org/queen-of-green/dirty-dozen-parfum-fr...

https://www.ewg.org/research/not-so-sexy

https://www.mamavation.com/featured/toxic-perfume-chemicals....

https://alituranaturals.com/the-top-10-toxic-chemicals-in-pe...

https://www.forceofnatureclean.com/truth-about-toxic-fragran...

> The studies you cite do not list who funded them, but one of the links is ... a website which sells sneakers! One of the worst VOC offenders!

I'd ask you to consider that perhaps your sources of information, all apparently non-scientific (and many also having financial interests in "all natural" products) may not be the best counter-point to mainstream scientific research.

Here are some quotes:

Synthetic musks used in fragrances are of particular concern from an ecological perspective. Several of musk compounds are persistent in the environment and build up (bioaccumulate) in the fatty tissue of aquatic organisms.

diethyl phthalate, or DEP, is widely used in cosmetic fragrances to make the scent linger. Phthalates are choice ingredients in cosmetics because they are cheap and versatile. However, the European Commission on Endocrine Disruption has listed DEP as a Category 1 priority substance, based on evidence that it interferes with hormone function. Phthalates have been linked to early puberty in girls, reduced sperm count in men, and reproductive defects in the developing male fetus (when the mother is exposed during pregnancy).

That sounds pretty science-y to me, admittedly a layperson.

Also, that's a nice story, but I already practice stress reduction techniques on a daily basis for other stressors. I also regularly assess myself for stress level so that I know to apply them.

When my partner bought a couch that off-gassed from the particleboard for months, I was not stressed by it. I did, however, develop a severe headache, disorientation, and migraine-like symptoms.

There's also the correlation of various VOCs with long-term health risks. Do you think that is just stress as well?

As I mentioned, I practice stress reduction techniques on a daily basis. I have studied and practiced them for years, from older traditions and today's teachers. I even teach them to others. People often comment on my calm and peaceful state and demeanor.

Stress is not the culprit here. The culprit is chemical poisoning.

> There's also the correlation of various VOCs with long-term health risks. Do you think that is just stress as well?

Some VOCs are toxic. Perfumes are not. You can look up their safety data sheets.

The skin prick test done over my partner's entire back using dozens of allergens to form a comprehensive list of allergies. There was not a 100% reaction to all allergens and there was no way for my partner to know which allergen was applied in each grid.

You're going to tell me that my partner's selective reactions to over 100 different skin pricks were all psycho-somatic? I actually find your remarks dismissive and rather offensive.

Did I write anything that downplays your partner's problems? Perhaps you think that psycho-somatic problems aren't common, or are somehow the fault of the people suffering from them? Psycho-somatic symptoms are real. I experienced them myself for many years. I do not dismiss your partner's symptoms.

Human bodies are complicated and diverse. Finding solutions to health problems requires an open mind and effort to learn and try various potential solutions. Please try not to react defensively to this stranger's words. My intention is to help you and your partner.

I am quite certain that your partner's perfume sensitivity and skin allergies are different biological processes. Allergies are a very specific process involving histamines and leading to inflammation. Nobody has demonstrated that process happening because of perfume in the air.

It's possible that your partner's skin allergies flare up when the brain releases stress hormones. Stress affects the immune system in complicated ways. Stress can trigger hives [0]. That doesn't make them perfume allergies.

Consider this process:

Smells perfume -> brain enters fear emotion -> brain releases stress hormones -> immune system increases sensitivity -> infection alert goes off in areas of skin (hives)

If this is the case, then you can prevent the hives by preventing the brain from entering the fear emotion state.

[0] https://medlineplus.gov/hives.html

Yes, here are some examples:

> Perfume sensitivity is something different. People develop emotional habits of reacting with fear when smelling perfume.

> I am quite certain that your partner's perfume sensitivity and skin allergies are different biological processes. Allergies are a very specific process involving histamines and leading to inflammation. Nobody has demonstrated that process happening because of perfume in the air.

You don't know anything about my partner's allergies and yet you're certain in your diagnosis.

Here are some facts:

* Contact dermatitis is the second most common allergic reaction.

* Fragrance chemicals are the leading cause for contact allergies.

* Airborne accute contact dermatitis has been studied extensively.

I'm not sure how you've come to the conclusions you have but you're outright dismissing decades of scientific research and concluding that my partner's allergies are psycho-somatic.

You're in league with new age medicine like healing crystals and tinctures.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/cf8f/f7d8b5cb3f8c279b2d877a...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00128071-200304110...

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0536....

The first article you link is a review of Allergic Contact Dermatitis (ACD). This is for substances that stick to skin cells and then trigger an allergic reaction. I searched through that article for reports of allergy to airborne fragrance and found only one:

> In 1 driver and 4 passengers, airborne ACD to such scents was diagnosed in Miami, FL [72].

It's from a short report from a hospital [0]. Five separate patients reported ACD related to driving or riding in separate Uber cars. The patients had positive patch tests for a fragrance (balsam of Peru). They did not analyze the substances in the driver's fragrance diffuser or the fragrances of the other cars. There are many possible explanations for the symptoms. Driving for Uber is a stressful job. And riding in Uber can be stressful, too, especially when the car has a bad smell that requires a powerful fragrance to cover up. So an equally plausible explanation of the five peoples' dermatitis is stress-induced dermatitis.

All other reports in that article of airborne ACD are for industrial substances affecting people working in factories and labs which use the substances. A worker in an addiction treatment facility became allergic to airborne heroin and morphine. Somebody became allergic to airborne sawdust.

2. https://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00128071-200304110...

The second article is titled "Fragrance Contact Allergy". You can read it at [1]. It studies fragrance substances that people apply to their skin. It contains this statement, with no references or further information:

> Air-borne exposure to perfumes may elicit an allergic reaction in very sensitive individuals, but this is an extremely rare phenomenon.

3. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0536....

The third article you listed is titled "Fragrance contact allergy: a 4‐year retrospective study". You can read it at [2]. The article does not contain the word 'air' or 'airborne'. It studies fragrance substances that are applied to the skin. It does not talk about allergic reaction to airborne fragrances.

I may be wrong. It's certainly possible that somebody somewhere has been allergic to airborne fragrances. But I found no credible evidence of that when I reviewed the scientific literature 4 years ago. And these three articles you linked also do not provide any evidence of it. If you find something concrete, or I missed something in the articles, please let me know.

[0] https://sci-hub.do/https://doi.org/10.1111/cod.12804

[1] https://sci-hub.do/https://doi.org/10.2165/00128071-20030411...

[2] https://sci-hub.do/https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0536.2010....

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/23/fragrance-pe...

> According to the Environmental Working Group, the average fragrant contains about 14 secret chemicals that aren’t listed on the label, many of which are linked to hormone disruption and allergic reactions, as well as about 80 percent of them not being tested for human safety in personal care products.

https://www.nontoxicrevolution.org/blog/wtf-fragrance

> Of the thousands of chemicals used in fragrances, most have not been tested for toxicity, alone or in combination. Many of these unlisted ingredients are irritants and can trigger allergies, migraines, and asthma symptoms. iii A survey of asthmatics found that perfume and/or colognes triggered attacks in nearly three out of four individuals. iv There is also evidence suggesting that exposure to perfume can exacerbate asthma, and perhaps even contribute to its development in children.

https://davidsuzuki.org/queen-of-green/dirty-dozen-parfum-fr...

> In 1986, the National Academy of Sciences tested commonly used fragrances for neurotoxicity; however, the results have still yet to be released. The good news is that many other tests have been done. In fact, in 1991 the EPA tested conventional, synthetic perfumes and found a long list of toxic chemical ingredients, including acetone, benzaldehyde, benzyl acetate, benzyl alcohol, camphor, ethanol, ethyl acetate, limonene, linalool, methylene chloride as well as phthalates, stearates, and parabens.

https://alituranaturals.com/the-top-10-toxic-chemicals-in-pe...

> “The average fragrance product tested contained 14 secret chemicals not listed on the label,” reports EWG, which analyzed the Campaign’s data. “Among them are chemicals associated with hormone disruption and allergic reactions, and many substances that have not been assessed for safety in personal care products.” EWG adds that some of the undisclosed ingredients are chemicals “with troubling hazardous properties or with a propensity to accumulate in human tissues.” Examples include diethyl phthalate, a chemical found in 97 percent of Americans and linked to sperm damage in human epidemiological studies, and musk ketone, which concentrates in human fat tissue and breast milk.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/toxic-perfumes-an...

> The good news is that immediate, irreversible damage to your health caused by one-time use of perfume or cologne — so-called “perfume poisoning” — is rare. But exposure to topical fragrances can trigger allergies, skin sensitivities, and cause harm over time.

https://www.healthline.com/health/perfume-poisoning

> BCPP’s report disclosed the results of chemical testing of 140 popular U.S. personal care and cleaning products. The testing revealed hundreds of toxic chemicals in these products, the majority of which were associated with the fragrance in the product.

https://www.womensvoices.org/2018/09/26/new-data-reveals-one...

Surveys are not reliable.

But yes vinegar is awesome. It's fantastic at water stains like nothing else.

You're supposed to leave and come back a few days later but my partner had a reaction in every square before she left the doctor. They asked if the interns could come take a look because they'd never seen such a complete reaction.

I don't know the details of your case or if any of this applies, but if by chance you were in the same boat wrt the negative control it might be worth circling back for a confirmation test at some point.

I also can't be around any strong perfumes or I'll break out in hives. It sucks when someone on a plane comes on like they just took a shower in the stuff.

Do you mean you're allergic to some common additive in table salt, or specifically to elevated salt concentrations? The former sounds like something you could call an allergy (but not to salt itself); the latter I probably wouldn't call an allergy so much as higher sensitivity to significantly hypotonic food or drinks. An allergy is usually defined as an excessive, damaging immune reaction to a foreign substance that is itself harmless at that concentration. Salt isn't a foreign substance.

I get the feeling a lot of people are lumping tons of things into the category of "allergies" where the underlying biological processes are very different. That doesn't mean the reactions aren't real, but it makes it very difficult to reason to reason about them. When everything's an allergy, the word allergy stops having any useful meaning.

I'm not about to tempt fate and willing subject myself to it.

Maybe our bodies have different tresholds for exposure to that stuff, and after oversaturating them for some time, there is no buffer available anymore?

Resulting in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_chemical_sensitivity

> Blinded clinical trials show that people with MCS react as often and as strongly to placebos as they do to chemical stimuli; the existence and severity of symptoms is seemingly related to perception that a chemical stimulus is present.

Clearly you have some kind of hypersensitivity to indoor environments. I’m not convinced it’s VOCs. They’ve been with us for a long time now, spanning a few generations, and life expectancy is only increasing. Maybe I’m wrong; I’m open to that possibility.

On the hand, the only other people I’ve met with issues similar to yours have allergic histamine reactions to particulates that are benign to everyone else. Like dust and grass. I have a friend that gets a shot every few months for it, and doesn’t have a problem when treated. Have you considered speaking with a doctor?

I don't need scientific consensus to prove it to me, I live it myself.

People I am close with do take me seriously, and the problem is fixed when the VOCs are taken away.

Instead people are questioning your analysis of the root cause. You can be meaningfully and honestly impacted and also be wrong about why you are having trouble. Even in the most extreme case where somebody wants to claim you effectively experiencing the placebo effect, that does not detract from the realness of your issue.

I think many people have trouble really groking this separation. Questioning the root cause can often feel like questioning the problem. Additionally it is easy to become attached to an explanation that may be faulty. Humans are not well-evolved to be perfectly rational and completely detached observers of their own lives. And faulty explanations don't necessarily cause faulty solutions, which can make things even harder to disentangle.

However I think it's important to try to keep in mind that all of these aspects are distinct in important ways despite being related. It is possible to question or even refute these aspects individually without casting aspersions on the other aspects. You can have a real problem, and a working solution, and still be completely wrong about why. That's fine, and actually pretty normal.

The nice smell after a rain storm? VOC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatile_organic_compound#Biol...

Farts are full of VOCs. No, seriously, every time I fart the TVOC sensor in my air purifier goes nuts, as does the one in my air quality meter. It's almost like the thing is shaming me for it :)

I would encourage you to learn more about the different types of VOCs, and at which concentrations they are known to be harmful. You might be having true allergic reactions to some harmless VOCs. You might be having psychosomatic reactions to other VOCs. You might not be having reactions to some harmful VOCs at all. Lumping it all together into "VOCs" is not helpful.

The first is that a lot of studies are simply careless. They use a "placebo" which has a scent to give the indication that there is something there, but then the "placebo" unintentionally contains VOCs. Or the lab's janitor uses them to clean the lab, things like that.

The second is that a lot of studies are funded by people with agendas. It's all too easy to get an invalid result by accident, much less on purpose.

See also replication crisis.

So then you either have to know and trust the authors of the study or spend the time to go through it with a fine toothed comb and find replications from independent scientists before you can trust it. Which nobody really has the time to do, so the default position becomes to dismiss anything the reader disagrees with.

It's a problem.

You don't get to throw away opposing evidence because it does not agree with the point you're attempting to sell. You don't actually want to have a conversation, you just want to push an agenda.

For my part, I pay attention to what others are sensitive to and avoid it as well.

If someone else has trouble coping with a substance but I'm "fine", that probably means that underneath my constituents are still struggling to deal with it and just not telling me.

It's like between the time I went to college and my own kids started school, they exploded and now all of the sudden a PB&J sandwich isn't allowed in school. That would have been unfathomable to me in my youth.

Also related, Distilbene did not only wreck fecondity, it gave a lot of children food allergies, and i'm pretty sure distilben distribution stopped in the late 70s, so maybe we should just get the numbers and compare, but i'd bet food allergies were more prevalent in the 80s.

I specifically remember weddings and whatnot when snacks were given out to everyone that there was no hesitation in offering anyone else's kids food for fear of them having an allergy.

I wonder then what the catalyst was for schools banning nuts and airlines no longer serving peanuts. Assuming people were always allergic in similar or higher proportion with similar severity, was it simply changes in the political winds?

(1) the internet and social media means you know about far more people with allergies than before,

(2) you are a adult and not a child, so you know more people now

(3) institutions have adopter broad inclusionary policies even if no one with an allergy is present

(4) institutions are being far more careful now (you eating a your granola bar poses no significant risk to someone with a peanut allergy, but it's still banned sitewide).

None know exactly why where are getting more allergic, but since allergy most often is the immune system attacking harmless things some theories is that we have to clean an environment in our homes.

Our immune systems are in many ways similar to police forces, and if they hear "a problem being reported" often enough while peanuts are around, they may just bunch them together with the offender.

The problem is compounded by a dirty baseline environment. In the early stages, the immune system is "primed" with a "baseline" of what should and shouldn't be there, but if the VOCs and such are already there, it just learns that they are OK and doesn't react to them.

It was a big deal then, there were kids i knew who were deathly alergic to peanuts.

Severe allergeries seem to be on the rise but i think your timeframe is wrong.

The only ailment in kids that I think I had heard of was asthma, for which people had inhalers.

Of course, my data is weak and anecdotal, but based on the fact that a staple American food isn't allowed in schools anymore, I assume something must have changed.

I don't know why people become allergic to them, but there must be something in some peanuts which sets off their immune system.

https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/01/10/peanut-allergy-earl...

Similar to germ theory, some exposure is actually good.

If our immune systems and bodies were all-knowing and perfect, then sure, that would be a valid assumption, but they're far from it.

Nature can be dangerous, too, but at least it's likely that someone in the past has dealt with it and lived to reproduce.

With new synthetic substances, you're essentially doing alpha-testing with your irreplaceable hardware/software system...

Turns out I'm allergic to some trees, some grasses, pollen, mold, dust mites, and a bunch of other things. And yet my childhood from a very young age was filled with playing outside in the yard and and in the woods.

Also my family had (indoor-only) cats since before I was born. My parents were allergic to them, and my sister and I are also allergic. (Wanting to get a cat is what prompted me to start the allergy shots.) So I've been exposed to cat dander since I was an infant. And yet: allergic. Some things are just hereditary, I guess.

I'm sure there are some cases where not being exposed to something when young can cause you to develop allergies, but that's definitely not the only cause. Seems like there is definitely a genetic component that can moot any amount of childhood exposure.

Would you say VOCs are harmless to people who are not sensitive to them?

We should ban or control the substances for which we have strong suspicion, I think most sane people would agree. But where to put the line is difficult. Some trees have pollen that causes asthma attacks and several deaths every year; should we cut them all?

So we need more nuances than black or white.

Now if you want my opinion, I would agree that reducing volatile substances is good; we still need to be careful about the things we put in their place.

Peanut allergies are an example of this: a person with allergies is having an immune response to the substance, while most humans don't experience this immune response. This doesn't necessarily indicate that peanuts are always inducing a low level "bad" reaction in people without allergies, just that those with allergies have an immune system that isn't properly reacting to a non-threat. Do you also not eat eggs, shellfish, every kind of tree nut, strawberries, or red meat? Because these are all possible allergies.

This isn't to say that VOC's aren't harmless, because I believe they are. But your assertion that sensitivities in one person indicate something about the entire human population is scientifically false and is most likely casting too wide of a net. You've essentially defined a process with high sensitivity (which means you catch all of the possible bad chemicals/substances), but very low specificity (you often identify substances as harmful when they are not). This is fine for ensuring safety but is unnecessarily restrictive.

Immune system can become sensitized not just to harmful substances, but also to ones "correlated" with them, meaning it's likely they've been exposed to e.g. peanuts which had something bad in them and associated it with the peanuts themselves.

Of course, there's also the fact that when a child is growing up in this VOC environment, their immune system never gets a chance to establish a good baseline for what should and shouldn't be in the system, and that is another reason allergies develop.

If I could live infinitely long but never experience anything, what's the point? Safety is the largest danger.

Certainly riding in a new car is not worth it, is it? Or having a "fresh-smelling" house with nice-looking furniture?

Not to mention the insane amount of "biocide" which happens in the process of producing a new car.

I consider animals and plants to be my close relatives (and dependencies, meaning I won't live long without them), so if I can avoid money-voting for stuff which harms them, I choose that.

Is it less hard to take seriously when the proper term is utilized?

Volatile Organic Compounds (a.k.a. VOCs)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatile_organic_compound

Our bodies are essentially "legacy code" that's been evolving not for a decade or two, but for millions of years.

If you've ever maintained an old software system, you know that old-tried-and-true inputs are probably good, but trying anything previously untested may cause unpredictable issues.

I look at any new substance which my ancestors haven't encountered (and been selected for tolerating) as basically alpha testing, which I'd rather avoid with my irreplaceable hardware-software installation.

Like gluten intolerance, one of the difficult things about reacting negatively to common consumer products is the number of people who refuse to believe it's a real problem.

I also have whatever the hell the MSG allergy is, though obviously it isn't to pure MSG because they can't reproduce it with pure MSG (from which they conclude it doesn't exist), but if someone wants to throw money at figuring out its root cause from some sort of breakdown product or adulterant that travels with commercially produced MSG, I'm happy to be the guinea pig. The last time it hit, at a Chinese restaurant in SF, the left side of my body was nearly paralyzed. It is bizarre whatever it actually is. And the number of you-know-whats I give about randos taking it seriously or not is precisely zero.

A former co-worker would projectile vomit if exposed to avocado. I saw that get evaluated blind as well.

Not to not take it seriously, but isn’t there a lot more stuff in American Chinese food other than MSG? Like of the 1000s of chemical substances that would be in a plate of Chinese food, why of all places would that be where you would isolate an MSG allergy?

> or adulterant that travels with commercially produced MSG

Then that wouldn’t be an MSG allergy. Oats are gluten free but celiacs have difficulty with them, not because of the oats but because of contamination.. we wouldn’t say they have an oat allergy though.

How about dust and smoke? How can someone be allergic to both! The temerity.

It’s less about chemistry of the materials, more about the sensitivity of the squishy, arbitrary human body.

"Dust" allergies often have to do with the substances which are on the dust, which is covered above.

Smoke is certainly not good for you.

This squishy arbitrary human body is the only one I've got for today, so I avoid whatever I think may harm it, even if there is no dots on the i's and crosses on the t's with regards to scientific proof.

If you look at the history of teflon, plastics, cigarettes, VOCs, synthetic food ingredients, you'll see that this strategy would have served a human well in the past, and it's the best one I can think of to follow for the foreseeable future.

It's also easier than you think to change these habits.

It describes a fascinating, if partly tragic, life and I'm surprised not to have seen a movie about it. Anyhow, at the bottom of the Wiki page is a link to a piece in Inc. magazine from April 2012 [2], The Undiluted Genius of Dr. Bronner's.

This gives a brief biog of the man and also interviews family members running the company now (or, at least, in 2012). Weird doesn't do the company's early or recent history justice; a cracking article - and the next time I go to the US (if I get to, Covid etc) I am definitely going to pick up some product.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Bronner

[2] https://www.inc.com/magazine/201204/tom-foster/the-undiluted...

Most people I know see it only as a body wash, and get freaked out when I use it for other things like mopping the floors.

Edit: Link to the full text for those who feel the need to down vote my shopping preferences. http://dev.null.org/psychoceramics/collection/bronner.html

Aside from that, it's the only brand I've seen which reliably does not put literally poisonous substances in their main product.

It is definitely not just "all love".

I've gone through times where almost anything made out of plastic and most indoor furniture made me feel sick, but these days it's mainly just artificial fragrances. Shampoo, conditioner, air freshener, carpet cleaners, garbage bags, dish soap, incense, laundry soap, pesticides, dryer sheets, and so on. I have to use all of these in special unscented versions and try to get any roommates to do so as well. Some are difficult to avoid in public, other people's clothes and hair, fumes coming from laundry vents outdoors, or areas where large amounts of these products are stored such as groceries and hardware stores. The distancing and masks from covid have helped a bit, plus I'm staying home more which is a safe place.

This is a problem that's been somewhat peripheral to my other health problems, but has been very disruptive for me. in terms of interpersonal relationships, maybe even worse than type 1 diabetes or celiac because it can make it uncomfortable to get near other people physically, either for a hug or to be in their house or car. Having to convince girlfriends to change hair products has been a major source of stress, too. There are times when I've been forced to be around people who use typical fragrances products on a visit, or at a hotel, and that's difficult.

I've tried to look into what health problems could be related to this. There is a syndrome that used to be called MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity) and is now called TILT (Toxicant Induced Loss of Tolerance). Mainly I have found people with Multiple Sclerosis and an immune disorder called MAST cell activation. I have celiac and type 1 diabetes, which are very closely related to MS, so it makes sense. This is the sort of thing that's very difficult to work on with doctors, and it seems likely the best treatment currently available is like an allergy - avoid the triggers.

Yeah, that's awful stuff. Your partners and cohabitants should be grateful that you're somewhat of a canary in a coalmine for them:

> Regular use of cleaning sprays has an impact on lung health comparable with smoking a pack of cigarettes every day, according to a new study.

https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/full/10.1164/rccm.201706-131...

They say "regulations are written in blood," which makes you wonder what "new car smell" was composed of 50 years ago.

Hershey's chocolate is now just rancid swill that just tastes of sugar with a hint of vomit.

Swapping refined sugar for HFCS 55 (the most common type) is basically an even trade sans some extra water content in the syrup and palm kernel oil is just saturated fat but sourced from a plant instead of animals.

I don’t think anyone is gonna argue that a high sugar and saturated fat diet is healthy but no worse than the same things sourced from other places. In an alternative universe palm oil and corn syrup would have been the standard and people would complain about the switch to lard and white sugar.

b) HFCS is sourced from corn, which means pesticide residue.

c) Palm oil also leads to fatty liver.

They may be an "even trade", but certainly harmful to one's health.

I absolutely agree with you that sugar and saturated fat in anything other than moderation is harmful to your health but that, in this case, the source of those things doesn't really matter.

I don't shop (in person) often but when I do visit the Walmart, next town over, the chemicals of all the new products literally bring tears to and irritate my eyes. I have to stop and rest and try to find places to breathe that don't feel toxic. No one else could ever related.

Dishsoaps too, I find the Dawn dish soap scent absolutely repulsing, mostly because of poor associations with 3 month old sponges, freezing cold houses, and mildewy sinks from college. I don't know how anyone stomachs the stuff. The smells are so "artificial" in the sense that they are one note, they don't feel organic. They lack the nuance of something that contains 50 terpenes might have.