CHEMICALS: WHAT IS CHEMICAL SENSITIVITY?

Posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 6:52 am

Allergy and sensitivity to chemicals is a contentious and highly controversial area. Many doctors and scientists would agree that they have an inadequate understanding of many people’s apparent reactions to chemicals in their environment. There is little research data to explain what chemicals cause reactions, what symptoms result, and what the underlying mechanisms in the body actually are.

The areas that are best documented, and where most doctors and scientists agree, are those of allergy to chemicals (where the immune system is involved, and which can be detected by skin and laboratory tests), and irritant and toxic reactions, where exposure to high levels of chemicals, usually at work, causes symptoms and disease.

The area that is most disputed and under-researched is the one which some doctors call ‘chemical sensitivity’. The definition of chemical sensitivity is substantially empirical, based on clinical practice and observation of large numbers of people with a common history of disease and presenting symptoms. In this definition, chemical sensitivity means adverse reactions to tiny or very low levels of chemicals in the environment, in which the immune system is not demonstrably involved.

It may appear to you, if you react to chemicals, that this controversy over allergy versus toxic reactions versus sensitivity has very little relevance for you. However, it is important in that it conditions the response of any doctor who may treat you. You will get very widely differing diagnoses, sympathy and treatment, according to the individual doctor’s own beliefs and attitudes.

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