MCS - fact or fantasy?

[peptoabysmal]

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity.

I just read an amusing article where a woman was arrested for trying to poison her chemically sensitive husband.

Sweet smell of perfume could land wife in prison (http://famulus.msnbc.com/famulusgen/ap05-16-104334.asp?t=APNEW)

I have seen news stories on communities of people who try to eliminate all sources of chemical contamination in their community. There was one where people started reacting to the reporter and the camera crew saying they were getting ill from a block away by all the chemical contamination carried in by the reporter etc.

These folks struck me as being, well, a little off their rocker. It seemed to me to be more of a psychological illness than a real physical illness.

What do you think?

Here's a site where they discuss this topic, and one of the links compares Hell to the "smoking section".

Is there a religious connection to this illness? (http://www.ourlittleplace.com/mcs.html)

[Underemployed]

I'm with Chris Rock on the whole idea - check out what he has to say about people who whine continually about food allergies.

It does seem true (google for yourself) that asthma is on the rise as a result of industrial and car air pollution. But there is a small counter-argument that western children are less exposed to dirt as babies and thus less able to cope with them as they get older.

It is also becoming inescapable that literacy and education is a direct cause of myopia.

When someone needs an inhaler, I give them the benefit of the doubt. But when someone who ought to know better claims they are wheatgerm-intolerant I treat their claim with disdain until I see a medical report.

Let's have an experiment. You and I can get together and kidnap one of these supposed MCS sufferers. We can release the subject into an environment they believe to be free of contaminants but which is not (or vice versa) and observe their reactions.

You bring the duct tape, I'll get the chloroform and we'll split the cost of the van.

[Dancing David]

I'd buy it as an allergy thing, when i lived in a neighborhood that was on top of a victorian industrial site, I became very allergic to a wide variety of substances. I was very allergic to artifical lilac and cinnamon oil, as well as mucho plant pollens.

If I stay away from things that sensitize my allergies they get weaker.

I always thought it was a feminazi push to keep other women from wearing perfume. (Wink)

Peace

[jimlintott]

I'm currently off of work because they started renovating last October. For six months I kept getting sicker and sicker. Eventually my doctor and I made the connection. On an experimental trip back I was reacting within an hour and was hoping to lay down and rest in about four hours. Compare this to having absolutely no symptoms whatever when not there. I was shocked at how quickly I reacted, its no wonder that after a couple of weeks in there I would end up flat on my back sick.

Perfumes are extremely offensive. I have to hold my breath to enter a department store with 'the stinky' department up front. Air fresheners are probably worse. I have to use unscented soap and unscented toilet paper (very important).

I am a mild case. I would not want to be more sensitive because life would truly suck. Natural smells don't bother me. I can wander around a pig farm without a problem (pig farms have an odour problem) yet I have become physically ill because a cashier was wearing perfume. It seems to be related to chemicals and it's not fun.

I frequently tell people that, yes, a large pile of horse manure actually smells better than your strawberry fresh air freshener.

[Dancing David]

Yeah whats with the air fresheners?

Peace

[jimlintott]

I don't know but they sure do stink.

I got in a car the other day with a tree shaped air freshener labelled 'new car smell'. New car smells are an exciting combination of curing plastics and glues. Nice scent to duplicate.

[EdipisReks]

Originally posted by jimlintott
I don't know but they sure do stink.

I got in a car the other day with a tree shaped air freshener labelled 'new car smell'. New car smells are an exciting combination of curing plastics and glues. Nice scent to duplicate.

i can think of worse smells to duplicate ;)

[jimlintott]

Duplicate seems to be the key. Natural smells, other than being offensive, don't make me ill. I can buy a bag of lemons and smell them all day but give me a product with a lemon fresh scent and it will likely make me physically ill.

For revenge I'm going to market a line of 'Oops I Farted' air fresheners. Early market research has not been promising however. :confused:

[Fade]

Perfume makes my eyes water.

As for allergies, I am not sure the dirt explanation holds up. How would one go about testing for allergies in nations that are poor enough to have their children playing in dirt all the time? Perhaps it's a lot like depression and other mental disorders of the kind. they just aren't important enough to worry about in the face of survival.

[Dancing David]

I Can't Believe It's Not Fart...

[sickstan]

I submit to you that multiple food allergies can be scientifically "proven" whereas multiple chemical sensitivities has a set of definitions that prevents quantitation. We all have smells we're adverse to. Whereas I love dried squid and garlic (not together), others find it repulsive. Whereas I think Tommy by Tommy Hilfiger is severely vomitorious, others like it and splash it on like a pig bathing in slime. However, our personal takes on various scents are subjective. In order for MCS to gather acceptance among a vast majority of physicians, we'd need something objective we could actually test. Like chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and functional somatic syndrome, MCS is continuously lumped in and dissociated from each other by both supporters and detractors. I believe this is precisely because there are no objective criteria for which one could be "ruled in" or "ruled out." I don't know what the solution is, but until people come up with mutually agreed-upon test hypotheses, I view these entities as artificial nomenclature.

[popsy]

Originally posted by sickstan
I submit to you that multiple food allergies can be scientifically "proven" whereas multiple chemical sensitivities has a set of definitions that prevents quantitation. We all have smells we're adverse to. Whereas I love dried squid and garlic (not together), others find it repulsive. Whereas I think Tommy by Tommy Hilfiger is severely vomitorious, others like it and splash it on like a pig bathing in slime. However, our personal takes on various scents are subjective. In order for MCS to gather acceptance among a vast majority of physicians, we'd need something objective we could actually test. Like chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and functional somatic syndrome, MCS is continuously lumped in and dissociated from each other by both supporters and detractors. I believe this is precisely because there are no objective criteria for which one could be "ruled in" or "ruled out." I don't know what the solution is, but until people come up with mutually agreed-upon test hypotheses, I view these entities as artificial nomenclature.

Yet those sufferers do have *something* whatever it's called. There are no, or little, criteria for testing because the conditions are so poorly understood. I have *something* that is labelled Fibromyalgia though pain in the muscles and fibers is the least of my problems. Fibromyalgia appears to be a centralized sensory dysfunction whose cause has little to do with joints and muscles but the perception of pain in them and other systems in the body. I suspect that the conditions you named have dysfunction in chemical transmitters in the brain, as I believe FM does. So little is known about the brain chemistry that it is about at the point of thinking malaria was caused by 'bad air'.

[DrMatt]

Originally posted by peptoabysmal
Multiple Chemical Sensitivity.



Unsubstantiated.


Here's a site where they discuss this topic, and one of the links compares Hell to the "smoking section".


Tobacco smoke smells like puke and makes me cough. I don't think that has anything to do with MCS.

[Dragonrock]

Originally posted by DrMatt
Tobacco smoke smells like puke and makes me cough. I don't think that has anything to do with MCS.

I feel the same way. If someone is smoking around me then I can't eat.

I like to say that I have a psychological allergy to tobacco smoke. If I'm around smokers then I will hold my breath without thinking about it until I start to get dizzy. I have to concentrate on breathing or I will hold my breath. I blame it on the fact that my father used to smoke and none of us could stand the smell when he did.

[sickstan]

Originally posted by DrMatt

Tobacco smoke smells like puke and makes me cough. I don't think that has anything to do with MCS.

I find it curious that cigarette smoke (well, most cigarette smoke) makes me puke, but that a fine cigar has a delicious odor. Something in cigarettes (ammonia? arsenic?) and maybe the aging process, make the smoke radically different.

[BeholdTheTruth]

Originally posted by peptoabysmal
[B]Multiple Chemical Sensitivity.

These folks struck me as being, well, a little off their rocker. It seemed to me to be more of a psychological illness than a real physical illness.


Why?