Sensitivity syndromes sick building syndrome

Chemical Sensitivity A Guide to Coping with Hypersensitivity Syndrome, Sick Building Syndrome and Other Environmental Illnesses. Bonnye L. Matthews. Jefferson, NC McFarland, 1992. 

The debate over the association of formaldehyde with health complaints overlapped the controversies over multiple chemical sensitivities and sick building syndrome. 

Sick Building Syndrome and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity... 

Formaldehyde is a major contributor to many cases of sick building syndrome. It is a very toxic chemical that is corrosive to the skin, eyes, and the respiratory system. Acute or chronic exposure can result in difficulty breathing and even brief exposures can induce asthmatic reactions in sensitized individuals. 13 Exposures to mixtures of formaldehyde and lipophilic chemicals can result in unanticipated toxic effects. 14 Formaldehyde is an animal carcinogen, a suspected human nasal cancer carcinogen 29 and suspected human leukemogen. 3°1... 

Bardana EJ Jr, Montanaro A, O Hollaren MT Building-related illness a review of available scientific data. Clinical Reviews in Allergy 6 61-89, 1988 Bartha L, Baumzweiger W, Buscher D, et al Multiple chemical sensitivity a 1999 consensus. Arch Environ Health 54 147-149, 1999 Berglund B, Gunnarsson AG Relationships between occupant personality and the sick building syndrome explored. Indoor Air 10 152-169, 2000... 

Chester AC, Levine PH The natural history of concurrent sick building syndrome and chronic fatigue syndrome. J Psychiatr Res 31 51-57,1997 Cone J, Suit TA Acquired intolerance to solvents following pesticide/solvent exposure in a building a new group of workers at risk for multiple chemical sensitivities. Toxicol Ind Health 8 29-39,1992... 

Hodgson MJ, Frohliger J, Permar E, et al Symptoms and microenvironmental measures in nonproblem buildings. J Occup Med 33 527-533,1991 Jaakkola JJK, Tuomaala P, Seppanen O Air recirculation and sick building syndrome a blinded crossover trial. Am J Public Health 84 422-428,1994 Martin JR The sensitive individual and the indoor environment case study. Am Ind Hyg Assoc J 56 1121-1126, 1995... 

Welch LS, Sokas R Development of multiple chemical sensitivity after an outbreak of sick-building syndrome. Toxicol Ind Health 8 47-50, 1992... 

L. Lawson. Staying Well in a Toxic World. Understanding Environmental Illness, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, Chemical Injuries and Sick Building Syndrome. Chicago The Noble Press, 1993. 

The affliction of environmental illness, otherwise known as multiple chemical sensitivity (mcs), rendered the ordinary spaces of late capitalist life uninhabitable. brings together diverse individualized experiences of multiple symptoms that sufferers typically link to mild exposures of many unrelated chemicals. Like sick building syndrome, MCS is a phenomenon with a multiplicitous nature. Because individualized reactions are difficult, if not impossible, to objectify with conventional biomedical techniques and because they are elicited by low, subtoxic, supposedly safe levels of common, unrelated chemicals, the very existence of mcs was highly controversial in the late twentieth century, and it remains so. mcs does not conform to the biomedical logics already available for categorizing bodily states, nor does it conform to biomedical expectations of what a body is supposed to be able to do. 

There were many nonspecific illnesses, or syndromes, that emerged in the late twentieth century. Despite, or perhaps because of, their proliferation, they are usually controversial. All have in common either a lack of identifiable cause or a diversity of expression, or both. In addition to sick building syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivity, nonspecific Ulnesses include Gulf War syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, cumulative trauma disorder (also called repetitive strain injury), and a host of psychological disorders. 

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