Education About Chemical Sensitivity

Medical Dianosis Definition

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity is the termonology currently used to medically describe an unusually severe sensitivity or allergy-like physical reactions to many different kinds of pollutants including solvents, VOC's (Volatile Organic Compounds), perfumes, petrol, diesel, smoke, "chemicals" in general and often encompasses allergies and physical reactions to pollen, house dust mites, and pet fur & dander.

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, (MCS), is also known as Chemical Injury, Chemical Sensitivity, Environmental Illness (E.I.), and Multiple Allergy. Unlike true allergies where the underlying mechanisms of the problem are relatively well understood and widely accepted, multiple chemical sensitivity is generally regarded as "idiopathic", meaning that it has no known mechanism of causation and it's processes are not fully understood. However in 1999 the medical establishment adopted a definition of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity for diagnosis purposes:

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity was Often Misdiagnosed

For too long doctors misdiagnosed MCS, and related conditions like, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), and Environmental Illnesses with Heavy Metal Toxicity and very often referred patients suffering the pysical pain symptoms of these conditions to psychiatry. This type of "It's all in your head" treatment adds emotional suffering on top of the physical suffering these patients already experience.

This attitude among many doctors is exceptionally harmful and can lead to death for their patients. Watch this video of a news cast about the death of a young woman in the U.K caused by her doctors' disbelief:

More recently scientific and medical studies have been conducted and laboratory results are not consistent with a psychologic origin of chemical sensitivity.

Scientific research is beginning to uncover some facts that prove painful conditions like MCS, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), Environmental Illnesses and Heavy Metal Toxicity are real physical conditions that possibly have a genetic component and that involve similar biological and chemical processes.

Difficulties in Diagnosing Multiple Chemical Sensitivity

The problem of discovering a cause for MCS is difficult due to the variable nature of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity from one patient to the next, and because of the nature of conventional medical practices today. Medical knowledge and practice is divided into into various "specialties." Doctors train in one or the other specialty and seldom understand human health outside their own speciality.

Some researchers realized that there seems to be a cross-over in the sypmtoms associated with MCS, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), Environmental Illnesses and Heavy Metal Toxicity; and that the range of and nature of symptoms indicates the source of the problem likely lies within the neurological, endrocrine and lymphatic systems because these systems effect the entire body.

Avoidance of Chemical Sensitivity Triggers

For most sufferers with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, the avoidance of triggering chemical irritants, pollutants and toxicants is an important key to regaining health. Unfortunately, convention medicine has offered them little help.

Avoidance might sound like an easy solution until you have to do it. How do you get to work on public transportation and avoid the over-powering chemicals in the combination of fragrances liberally applied by other transit riders? How do you ride in an elevator in close proximity to other people wearing heavy doses of perfumes and fragrances? How do you sit in a cubical eight hours a day next to co-workers wearing heavy fragrances? Try to imagine yourself in this situation. Each day exposure to these chemicals cause you to get sicker.

Filtering masks and other air purifying devices are expensive and only marginally effective. You wake up many nights in a cold sweat, in fear that you will become so weak and so ill that you won't be able to work. Many MCS sufferers end up in this position. What is worse is that no matter how many times you tell the people around you that you have MCS and that the fragrances they wear effect your health, they don't make any changes. It appears that they really don't care, they must think "Perfumes don't make me sick, so it must be all in your head". Try to imagine how you might feel in these circumstances.

Chemical Sensitivity Triggers

Agents whose exposures are associated with symptoms and suspected of causing onset of chemical sensitivity with chronic illness include gasoline, kerosene, natural gas, pesticides (especially chlordane and chlorpyrifos), solvents, new carpet and other renovation materials, adhesives/glues, fiberglass, carbonless copy paper, fabric softener, formaldehyde and glutaraldehyde, carpet shampoos (lauryl sulfate) and other cleaning agents, isocyanates, combustion products (poorly vented gas heaters, overheated batteries), and medications (dinitrochlorobenzene for warts, intranasally packed neosynephrine, prolonged antibiotics, and general anesthesia with petrochemicals).

Multiple mechanisms of chemical injury that magnify response to exposures in chemically sensitive patients can include neurogenic inflammation (respiratory, gastrointestinal, genitourinary), kindling and time-dependent sensitization (neurologic), impaired porphyrin metabolism (multiple organs), and immune activation.

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