When should you begin to suspect you may be reacting to ambient chemicals? Suspect chemical intolerance or overload when you develop any of the following signs:

1. 1. Symptoms worse in closed spaces (shopping malls, long car journeys)
   2. Symptoms worse on week days (chemicals at work
   3. Symptoms better on holiday (fresh air!)
   4. Worse in an urban or industrial environment
   5. Gasoline or gloss paint gives you a headache
   6. Acute sense of smell to chemicals
   7. Loss of sense of smell or it comes and goes
   8. You get a “lift” or liking for certain chemical odors
   9. Intolerant of synthetic fabrics (sneezing, skin rash, irritation)
   10. Others similarly ill in the home or workplace
   11. Illness began after moving to present location or current employment

Note 6. and 7. are two sides of the same coin, essentially.

Does the idea of a “lift” or buzz from chemicals sound crazy? Why should it? Think about the kids who sniff glue and solvents. They like it! Just because they are too stupid to realize the dangers doesn’t mean it is not pleasurable brain stimulation.

Note that with exposure at work symptoms may not begin till Tuesday or even Wednesday, as the cumulative effect builds up. Similarly, symptoms may not clear by Saturday morning but could linger through till later. Yet you may get the worst reaction on Monday (first day back at work), as your body is challenged by chemicals which have gassed out over the weekend.

Note: Once intolerance to one chemical substance is established, it tends to spread rapidly to other substances. We call this the spreading effect.

Contacts

There are many chemical contacts in our lives: plastics, urban atmospheric pollution, perfumes and cosmetics, cleaners, solvents, aerosol sprays, paints and food additives, to name but a few. Most of these are derived, ultimately, from petroleum and the whole group we call “hydrocarbons” from their chemical structure. Interestingly, all petroleum (and coal) products originated as pine trees in carboniferous forests millions of years ago. And guess what? We find pine and its terpene derivatives today are quite potent allergens! Is that just a coincidence or is there a connection?

Don’t forget the work environment as a source of chemical exposure. Most countries have some sort of regulatory body to monitor and regulate work exposures. However, to pretend this system is working efficiently and protecting workers properly is to be foolish and gullible in the extreme.

But the point most people miss is that ambient exposures at home (or even in school) can be hundreds of times higher than allowed safety limits in the workplace!

Air conditioning often makes matters far worse by circulating indoor pollution.

Cleaning Up Your Chemical Environment

It makes good sense to clear your environment of as many unnecessary chemicals as possible. This will reduce your overall environmental burden. We choose the home for this because it is something you can control to a great extent. You can’t do much about what is beyond your doors and windows but you should be able to effect enough changes indoors to produce a worthwhile improvement.

The bedroom is a particularly good target for local air cleaning, because the bedroom is small and circumscribed and we do spend more time there than in any other room of the house.

Some substances you will be able to replace with safer substitutes. Many you will be able to dispense with altogether. Some you will need and no substitutes can be found. Just go easy with them.

I usually get patients to comb the whole house, room by room, cupboard by cupboard and shelf by shelf, listing all the chemicals found. Sometimes, the list itself is a shock and this is salutary. To pinpoint all potential trouble, I get them to supplement what can be seen with what can be smelled. I call this a “nose survey”!

Scott-Mumby’s Rule Of The Nose: I have a maxim, based on decades of experience, which is that if there is enough substance present to cause an odor, there is enough to cause symptoms. Some chemical substances, of course, have no odor.

The list of potential chemical allergens shown below will help you search out trouble. Store, replace or throw out as much as possible of what you find. This is a good strategy for everybody, whether chemically sensitive or not.

• Aerosols. We all know about the effect aerosol propellants (CFCs) have on the environment. What is more important and often forgotten is that they have a bad effect on humans too!
• Air fresheners. Just fake chemicals to mask the problem.
• Cavity wall insulation: Urea-formaldehyde foam insulation (UFFI) is a cause of considerable health problems; so much so that it was banned in most countries. But it is still present in many walls!
• Cleaning materials. There are always simpler alternatives, even if they do call for a little more manual effort. Sodium bicarbonate or borax can often be made to serve where more powerful alkaline agents would be used. Avoid ‘biologicals’ like the plague. Especially avoid fabric ‘conditioners’ which seem to cause strong reactions in some.
• For personal washing use Simple, Castille or Neutragena soaps. For household duties try soft green soap (that’s its name!) obtainable from chemists.
• Cooking utensils. Allergics should avoid using non-stick pans with Teflon-type coatings. Nor is aluminium cookware recommended, due to toxicity problems. Glass (corning ware) and enamel are best.
• Fabrics. Most people are better off in natural fabrics, such as silk, wool and cotton. Man-made fabrics all give off fumes long after they are new. Of course some people are allergic to natural fabrics, especially wool, and trial and error is required to find what suits you best.
• Flues. We all love an open fire, with flickering flames! But chimney flues may present problems as they can leak and give off serious fumes. The only safe course is to have the flue lined with a modern flexible flue liner. Better still, change to electrical radiators and eliminate gas or open fires altogether.
• Garages, integral. Petrol fumes are a common concern; I find. These can leak from an integral garage into the house (typically the kitchen). It is far better (and safer!) to park the car outside and to use the garage to grow mushrooms or for a model workshop. Haha!
• Gas. All chemically-sensitive patients should get rid of gas from their homes if it is at all practicable and economically viable to do so. Induction electric cooking plates can be a good option.
• Heating. Avoid ducted air systems, fan heaters and open bar electric fires. Best are central heating radiators or, for portable use, small oil-filled electric radiators.
• Make-up. Cosmetics are generally biologically unfriendly. Try to get the hypoallergenic kind but remember there is no such thing as non-allergenic.
• Paints. Paints can cause many unpleasant symptoms. There are a number of ‘organic’ paints coming onto the market. These are water-soluble and free of the toxic solvent fumes. If you don’t want to use water-based paints, latex paint is said to be best for allergics. Stir in sodium bicarbonate until the paint stops bubbling. Richard Mackarness suggests about 100 g to 5 litres of paint.
• Toothpaste. Toothpaste may contain ammonia, ethanol, sodium laurel sulfate, artificial colors and flavors, formaldehyde, mineral oil, saccharin, sugar and carcinogenic PVP plastic.

Don’t forget car and upholstery are potential hazards. Nowadays, most are treated with complex stain-repellent and preservative chemicals. Driving a second-hand car (safer) may be a good option for some but you may not want to throw out your nice new carpet or sofa. Things will probably improve in time.  However, for an unlucky few, the truth is simple, if bleak—they will never be well until the luxury wall-to-wall hazard is disposed of!

To a more natural world,

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

Anyone who has been following me for any length of time will know I’ve been round the block a few times! Back in the 1980s I was one of a small handful of doctors, worldwide, who were discovering just how much foods and chemicals could make us sick.

We called ourselves clinical ecologists: ecology, study of an organism in its environment!

We were fascinated to see healthy people made sick by things going on around them. They were not “busted”, like mainstream doctors believed. They were hurting from the bad effects chemicals, molds, Candida, heavy metal poisoning, food allergies and other agents.

It was a wonderful time of discovery and now the world seems to be discovering it all over again, as if nobody ever thought of it before!

But back in the day I introduced the term “human canaries” in my 1986 book Allergies: What Everyone Should Know. I had a long slot on prime time BBC television, explaining that canaries taken down the mines, were the first and best sensors of air quality. If the canaries got sick or died, humans needed to get out, fast.

It seemed to me then that there were a lot of human canaries, falling around and getting sick, as a warning to the rest of us: we are breathing excess pollution. But nobody paid any attention to these super-sensitive canaries.

Outdoor Air Pollution

The air we breathe today, especially in cities, could hardly be awarded the term ‘fresh’. It is so corrosive that it damages the fabric of our buildings. It would be a foolish individual who claimed these substances had no effect on the humans who breathe them continuously.

The table below lists some of the main components of the pollution of urban air.

• Hydrocarbons from fuel combustion
• Carbon monoxide
• Oxides of nitrogen
• Sulphur dioxide
• Ozone
• Formaldehyde
• Pesticides
• Chlorine
• Mercury
• Lead
• Nickel
• Manganese
• Cadmium

Most of these substances come from the burning of fossil fuels, especially within a gasoline (petrol) combustion engine. Other sources of pollution include smelting, agricultural spraying and waste incineration. Some highly toxic substances such as peroxyacetyl nitrate and nitrous oxide are caused by the effect of sunlight on existing atmospheric pollutants.

The media, backed by ignorant medical science, said the whole thing was nonsense. The canaries were just sad, sick mental cases, they scoffed. “It’s all in their mind.”

Fast-forward 30 years or more and it’s now a hundred thousand times worse. The overload is affecting EVERYBODY, not just the canaries. The EPA is telling us that indoor pollution is worse than outdoor air quality: up to 100 times worse!

I even talk of a “chemical blizzard” that we are all exposed to. It’s in the food we eat, the water we drink, BUT IT’S EVEN IN THE AIR WE BREATHE. According to the EPA, there are something like 85,000 alien chemicals in production at any one time and almost NONE of them have been honestly tested for safety. Even worse, nobody knows what the combined effects of several chemicals together might be.

Millions of tons of these chemicals are produced every year and there is no sign of this torrent slowing down. In fact companies like Syngenta and Monsanto would like to take over our lives completely and make us swallow their toxic filth.

Indoor Air Pollution

The atmosphere indoors is loaded with formaldehyde from fabrics and furnishings, with cigarette smoke, products of combustion from stoves and heaters (such as nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide), sometimes asbestos, biological elements (such as dust mite, molds and bacteria) and numerous trace toxins from modern plastics and resins, such as xylene from paints and toluene di-isocyanate from varnishes.

A good clue to the fact that you may be suffering from indoor air pollution is that you feel worse in winter. Those who become worse in winter generally do so because of the build-up of indoor pollution at that time.

The reason is simple. When the weather turns cold we retreat indoors, closing all the windows and doors. Draughts are discouraged and often sealed against. Then we turn up the heating systems, such as gas fires and stoves, which themselves are the principal causes of the pollution. Some tests suggest that carbon monoxide levels in the home may rise by as much as 200 per cent at this time. Yet quite small amounts of this poison, breathed over a period, have serious effects.

The inference is quite clear. Get plenty of fresh air, even in the middle of winter. Open doors and windows as much as you (and those you live with) can stand. Don’t huddle over stoves and fires. Change your heating system, if practicable, to less polluting types such as electric oil-filled radiators. Avoid tobacco smoke.

When you consider long-term, meaning lifelong, exposure, it’s obvious we have a mess. Add in mold, danders, dust, particulate matter (such as smoke and car exhaust fumes) and it truly is terrifying, what we face.

My question is a version of one I used to ask: the question is not why are so many people sick today? It’s why are we not all sick, all the time?

Suspect environmental allergies if:

• It looks like an allergy but food testing failed to solve it
• Symptoms change as the individual re-locates in different places
• Worse at different times of the day, month or year
• If the client is well at home but feels bad at work (an environmental allergen or chemical pollutant in the work environment may be to blame
• Better on holiday (away from home)
• Your symptoms are centered on the respiratory system (nose, larynx, trachea and lungs) BUT REMEMBER: food allergies can also cause coughing, wheezing, sneezing and catarrh. Don’t be fooled!

Clean Local Environment

Even if you live out in the wilds, hundreds of miles from the nearest city, YOU ARE NOT SAFE. Toxic pollution is spreading all over the globe [In the book mentioned above, I reported a study in which radio-actively tagged atoms were released in London and showed up less than 24 hrs later in the Swedish city of Stockholm!]

Today it’s Asia that is the worry, not Europe. Chinese industrial pollution is spreading across the globe and altering the climate of the Pacific basin.

Go see the full image here:
https://cms.qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/atmosphere_geo5_2018235_eq-e1535122652515.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=3200&h=1798

We have to do something about this. But the answer isn’t going to be to campaign for new legislation. Those who are polluting our world care nothing for the common good. They have politicians completely in their pocket and repeatedly have laws passed just to protect THEM and not the public.

Back in the 1980s, I began to speak of a “clean local environment” which means to concentrate on our own living and working spaces and clean them up, as best we can. It is possible to have air purifiers that clean and scrub the air we breathe at home and in the office.

With today’s technology, we can clean our air to just about 99.99% pure and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

Peter Spiegel’s invention, the Air Doctor Pro is a good affordable solution to clean local air. I love the name “air doctor”: it’s exactly what he’s doing. Healing the air around you.

Go watch the webinar recording here: https://instantteleseminar.com/Events/114783951

It’ll tell you how to get one—or get 2, one for the bedroom, where we spend the most hours a day, and one for the most polluted room, typically the kitchen:

https://www.airdoctorpro.com/mumby/

Here’s to healthy, clean air. Hmmmm-haaaa!

Prof.

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor
www.alternative-doctor.com

Now a recent study suggest air pollution may be a key factor (I was teaching that back in the 1980s).

Exposure to air pollution during pregnancy is already suspected of a wide range of negative effects on the fetus.

Having a mother who lived within 1,000 feet of a freeway while pregnant doubles a child’s odds of having autism.

The finding comes from a study looking at environmental factors that might play a role in autism. Researchers from the University of Southern California collected data from 304 California children with confirmed autism and from 259 children who developed normally.

Air pollution is particularly heavy within a 1,000 ft. of a highway. Children born to women who lived in this contaminated zone were 86% more likely to have autism than kids born to women who lived further from the freeway.

The effect was especially noticeable the third trimester: a 2.2 times (220%) increased risk of developing autism.

It’s becoming clear that a child’s genetic inheritance has a lot to do with whether that child has autism; for example, boys are far more likely to have the condition. But genes cannot explain why one child develops autism while another does not.

If living near a Freeway is a risk factor, what might trigger autism? Is it really air pollution? Or could it be the noise?

We don’t know and until researchers test the actual amounts of pollution pregnant mothers are exposed to, the question is uncertain.

The weakness of a study like this is that people who live near freeways might have other health-related problems, like poor housing areas and poverty. But it’s a good start at proving chemical overload may be a trigger factor.

Of course lead could be a factor too. We know that lead is a severe neurotoxin. Don’t forget that, although lead is no longer used in gasoline, there are millions of tons of leaded dust lying around at the edge of freeways, getting blown around a great deal in dry weather and washed into the water table in wet weather.

We know that lead is a severe neurotoxin.

_{[SOURCE: Volk, H.E. Environmental Health Perspectives, published online Dec. 16, 2010.]}