VOC sensors are a kind of catch all, and consumer brands often have sensors that aren’t not of the highest quality. Somethings are more toxic than others, but you won’t get any useful breakdown from them. These nighttime spikes and variability over the day are consistent with my own use of these machines, but I do not suffer anything like what she describes.

>There's absolutely room for skepticism, but dismissing it out of hand by equating it to cell-tower crazies is ridiculous.

Dismissing her symptoms as completely fabricated is ridiculous but I think it's entirely reasonable to dismiss her explanation for them out of hand because it is entirely on-par with cell-tower crazies spouting off nonsense about things they don't understand.

She was on the third floor, no one else is having symptoms, lead and arsenic contamination beneath a foot of dirt and a big thick concrete foundation is never going to plausibly cause very high VOC levels only in one third floor apartment. She even dismisses expert opinions that disagree with her idea as "some expert wordsmithing and spin". She even claims that it's contaminated the tap water, as if it must just come from the groundwater.

I find the claim that there's a high VOC level in an apartment causing numerous health problems completely reasonable. It's the blatantly ridiculous leap of blaming remediated soil contamination that makes me dismayed. Quite frankly it makes people dismiss real environmental health problems by throwing in that nonsense along with it.

There's tons of valid explanations here, maybe when the flooring was replaced they went with a different supplier for that faux wood laminate and it's off gassing formaldehyde. Maybe the carpet in some part of the apartment had a similar issue. Maybe the drywall had to be replaced in that unit in the past and it's contaminated akin to the imported Chinese drywall back in the 00s. Maybe the paint stripper the apartment complex maintenance worker used was based on DCM and he accidently tipped over the can and they just said "screw it, we're putting new flooring over it anyways".

There's a thousand different valid explanations here, her explanation is nowhere on the map.

It's also entirely plausible that every apartment DOES have high VOC levels, but she is the only one reacting to them. Or that other people are also reacting to them and haven't figured out why yet.

my VOC sensor goes off the scale when my dishwasher is running.

Interesting. But it makes sense: Vaporization of detergents and other elements in the water.

Some sources: [1] https://www.haywardscore.com/articles/is-your-dishwasher-imp... [2] https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/826

Does this cause you concern or make you curious?

>There's absolutely room for skepticism

I'll bite. How would that look like in your opinion? In other words, to which part of her story would you apply this skepticism?

>The development was explicitly expedited with permission of the city.

What does that have to do with anything?!!? This is a complete non-sequitur? You're throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.

>but dismissing it out of hand by equating it to cell-tower crazies is ridiculous

Why? People who believe they are harmed by cellular towers present very real symptoms. They are sincere. How do you you know her symptoms aren't psychosomatic?

It has to do with your comment that the city would "deny development license if the proposed building will cast an overly large shadow over a playground." That's clearly not the case, here: they expedited development, rather than denying it.

I said there's room for skepticism because we don't know that it's not psychosomatic. But: she gathered environmental data, and reports completed prior to her moving there had already concluded that "VOCs were above residential limits and, in some cases, even above vapor intrusion risk levels." The developer had made plans for advanced vapor mitigation. One of the reasons the area was a Superfund site in the first place was due to VOCs. In other words, there are a number of external reasons to think this is plausible.

> said there's room for skepticism because we don't know that it's not psychosomatic.

Actually. We don't know anything. Or rather, we only know what she chose to present, already colored to match her conclusion.

How do you know some pertinent information isn't missing from her account?

>But: she gathered environmental data, and reports completed prior to her moving there had already concluded that "VOCs were above residential limits

So what? Let's say VOCs are above residential limits (and I'm not sure about that given that untrained people using consumer sensors are liable to get a fair share of false results or improperly interpreted results) ... BUT OK ... how does she (and you) know that this is what is causing her symptoms?

> In other words, there are a number of external reasons to think this is plausible.

I wouldn't go that far. All we can really say is that she is experiencing symptoms. Those symptoms could be a result of anything (or nothing). Nothing she says passes the smell test because she's engaging in very typical conspiracy theory thinking. She decided that the cause of her symptoms is living in an apartment built on reclaimed land for very flimsy reasons. And then she went around cherry picking evidence to support that conclusion.

I mean, she wrote a message to her apartment management company that stated: "The chemicals are still pouring out full blast" ... are they really? The management company sent an inspector to test for chemical and gas leaks ... and nothing. She hired her own consultant to perform the tests, and that person found nothing... and on and on and on.

She sounds EXACTLY like the people who are convinced cell towers are poisoning them. Every piece of countervailing is ignored by her ... just like a conspiracy theorist. She strikes me as someone who spiraled into this rabbit hole and got absolutely convinced this one thing (out of infinite number of possible things) is causing her symptoms.

Needless to say, I'm skeptical.

I mean, isn't that why she was asking for them to do professional testing?

And if it's a remediation site with VOCs above vapor intrusion risk levels, don't you think the government should investigate?

Seems like a bigger issue that the remediation was rushed through, and no one would respond to complaints that there could be issues with that rushed remediation.

Hazardous waste isn't cell towers. We know hazardous waste can make people sick, and even kill them -- depending on the chemical and exposure. She mentions concern that vinyl chloride was there above vapor intrusion risk levels and no one would tell her why it wasn't cleaned up. That sounds nothing like EMF panic.

>isn't that why she was asking for them to do professional testing?

If you read her account, there were multiple tests done, by her hired expert and one contracted by the building management company, not including the testing done by Roux. She didn't accept any of the results because they didn't match her conclusion.

>Seems like a bigger issue that the remediation was rushed through

Rushed through how? This is California where nothing gets built in any reasonable time. But again, what does this have to do with anything? There is zero evidence that her symptoms are caused by the building, or anything related to it. The author simply decided it must be the cause. Must. And now, for some reason, we're debating this non sequitur.

> She mentions concern that vinyl chloride was there above vapor intrusion risk levels and no one would tell her why it wasn't cleaned up.

An initial investigation by EIK had 1 sample of 17 that had vinyl chloride above screening levels, which raised VOC from off-site sources (the nearby superfund site) as a potential concern. As a result, Roux took more soil vapor samples several years later, and none of their measurements had vinyl chloride levels above the screening threshold. Maybe this process was rushed or shoddy or something (I wouldn't know or be able to guess), but from the EIR it sounds like Roux did the testing and didn't measure any significant VOCs.

and after this, they put in the system for mitigating vapor intrusion anyway.

Sure we know that hazardous waste can make people sick, but what we expect is that it would make dozens or hundreds of people in this apartment complex sick--not just one.