You aren't receiving pushback from people who are attempting to deny your experience. I don't think anybody here doubts the experiences you have mentioned.

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.

VOC's aren't all man-made. You'd need to live in a vacuum to avoid them altogether.

The nice smell after a rain storm? VOC

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

What are you saying, that because some VOCs are found in nature, any man-made VOC is OK too, just because it is part of the same chemical compound family?

I think the appropriate conclusion would be your sensitive to something more specific than just the very broad class of VOCs in general.

So... the ones I am not sensitive to, are they not harmful?

Just for the record, VOCs are literally "anything organic that boils at less than 250°C" (in the EU).

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.

Wait a minute, so you're telling me when I was laughing with my husband about how we should fart in front of the new air purifier and see if the sensor went off and he dismissed me, rolled his eyes and called me juvenile THAT I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG?!?!?

I,m using a more restricted definition of synthetics which we didn,t evolve with.

I don't know that we know enough to know that. It's certainly true that there are "natural" VOC's that can be harmful, and man-made VOC's that are not known to be harmful. I wouldn't necessarily presume that sensitivity is directly correlated to harm.