AIR QUALITY:

Surface finish, non-toxic:
The air quality closest to us can be most influenced by contaminating sources closest to us. These sources include any outgasing substance or dust or spore producing surface. Basically, these areas can be considered within the classifications of room wall, ceiling, and floor finishes, -- exterior house finishes, and, furnishings.

Non-toxic or low-toxicity finishes include sorbent in-gasing paints, stainless steel, a house cladding of either pre-finished aluminum, vinyl or steel, brick facings, and unfinished well-exposed cedar siding and solid wood walls and ceilings.

Surface finish, low maintenance:
A major factor in making a surface potentially toxic is in the manner it is maintained. Most paints, especially oil-based paints, produce hydrocarbon fumes which are toxic even to non-hypersensitive persons. Curing times, during which the solvents in the paint evaporate into the surrounding air, can range from days to months. Dangers arise particularly when such finishes are applied in colder weather. In such conditions the space involved must remain largely closed for ideal setting and for curing temperatures to be maintained. Even fully opened areas during warmer weather can accumulate high densities of these fumes.

PAINT CHARACTERISTICS can be considered.
OIL-BASED paints provide a hard, often scrubable, low maintenance, long lasting surface. Unfortunately, they release fumes which are highly aromatic and toxic in confined areas. This off-gasing may continue at an unhealthy level for as long as 10 months.

ALKYD paints are complex synthetic coatings intended to provide a hard finish with considerably lower levels of noticeable fumes. To a hypersensitive person, even these low levels in addition to other less noticeable outgasing products can produce intense and alarming symptoms. Ask manufacturer's sales advisors about the many improvements which have taken place with this type of paint during the last half of the 1990s.

LATEX PAINTS have a much shorter setting and curing time, ranging from hours to days. A severe trade-off is their low resistance to scuffing, marking, and soiling --- which often leads to the owner using solvents for cleaning.

CLEANING SOLVENTS leave behind outgasing residues.
Softer finishes typically require more frequently applied recoating than harder finishes.

LEAD-BASED paints had been banned in Canada for decades, yet they continued to be popular and on the market until the late 1980's due to non-enforcement of such regulations. Look for paints which have titanium added to provide the whiteness of the base, rather than lead.

Acid rain:
Chemically laden smoke from industrial processing plants and vehicle smog are frequently uplifted by moving air masses and may be transported for thousands of miles. Its return to the earth's surface occurs when the clouds carrying it become filled with moisture and respond to temperature, pressure and electrical changes by raining or snowing. Since the major destructive components included in this precipitation are acidic in nature, such rains are referred to as acid rains. At times these acid concentrations are comparable to weak solutions of sulfuric acid and nitric acid --- two very powerful bleaching and etching agents.

ACID RAIN over the longer term will increase the oxidation (aging) rate of exterior finishes, plants, soils, ponds, lakes, and car finishes. A further influence is to make soil sterile and kill trees and plants. Changes in lake pH acid-base ratios have been shown to be responsible for the death of fish populations. Building siding materials have been shown to have increased frequencies of scaling, pitting, splitting and discoloration regardless of whether they have been made from cedar, vinyl, steel, aluminum, brick, or concrete --- when exposed to acid rain.

STRONG CHEMICAL WASHES applied to building sidings are usually required to minimize the long-term effects of the acid rain degradation. While the hypersensitive person cannot cope with the fumes of such solutions, their house may become enclosed in a chemical cloud for a period of days or weeks. In addition to health endangerment, the added costs of such services present financial challenges to the hypersensitive person. The alternative is to allow the value of the real estate to continue to decline in appearance and value while choosing to use one's immediate resources to improve one's health.

Industrial Pollution: Local industries can pose a problem for those who live downwind of them. If the predominant wind direction changes periodically, individuals in different directions from a plant may develop symptoms whenever the wind is blowing in their direction. With one's symptoms not being continuous, the individual is rationally discouraged from considering that there is one source, that it is nearby, or that it is anything more than their weak health.

MANY INFLUENCES contribute to the intensity of reactive symptoms experienced by persons with differing degrees of health challenge and to substances which have a range of toxicity. Since no two proximate individuals usually have the same sense awareness, the intensity of the odors and symptoms which one has will not be directly mirrored in others. The manner in which most funded SCIENCE is carried out today (1997) offers no hope for those interested is creating and living in a balanced environment, balanced society, and balanced lifestyle.

LEAD BATTERY PROCESSING PLANTS may spew great amounts of lead-acid vapor into the surrounding region. The effect can kill all the local vegetation and dull the paint of all the vehicles nearby. Like many other environmental toxins, lead can settle into one or many areas in the human body --- providing symptoms according to where and how much lead is in solution. As to how much may be in the bloodstream at any one time often has a parallel with which foods we have eaten, our level of activity, and which other toxins we have in us. These "signs" may be masked making our definition of the problem even more difficult. MASKED symptoms and allergies are popular in persons with environmental hypersensitivities.

OTHER EXAMPLES:
AN ABATTOIR - rendering plant may emit odors which continually nauseate those who live downwind.

A MIXED CONCRETE processing plant may have a procedure of washing down all of its equipment every Friday evening with a chemical before closing for the weekend. The resulting offensive odor or the chemical vaporization may produce hypersensitivity reactions in persons living downwind which make them feel confused, irritable, and have nausea, tiredness, and headaches --- which take the weekend to clear. Unaware of the source, meaning, or solution to this dilemma, marriages may be torn apart by hypersensitive spouses feeling that they are no longer loved by each other since the expected best quality time together --- their weekends --- is a battleground of destructive emotions. This scenario can influence complete neighborhoods!

NIGHT DUMPING has been a persistent problem existing for decades.
It happens when Processing and Manufacturing plants choose to burn off toxic waste deemed too costly to send to waste processing facilities. This action blankets those residents who live downwind with poisons. Since municipal regulations clearly prohibit this activity, the financially desperate or financially greedy owners of such businesses deceptively take advantage of government bureaucracy weaknesses.

UNDERTAKEN AFTER DARK, the smoke flumes are largely visually undetectable.
With the institutionalization of and cost restrictions applied to government waste regulation environmental officers, such companies can easily time their emissions to times when such officers are unavailable. In an office where such investigators are only available to check complaints between 9.00 A.M and 4.30 P.M. Monday through Friday, "Free-to-pollute" enterprise reigns. Toxic waste venting companies are essentially given sanction to pollute during the closed periods of the regulation office --- all weekend and any night.

POLLUTION COMPLAINTS may pour into the regulatory office during these active polluting periods, only to be received IF the office has an automated message center. By the time Monday morning arrives, the returning officers have a string of complaints. NOW they go out to investigate the complaints. Of course, any knowledgeable polluter will have stopped their offensive operations with enough time remaining before Monday morning so that the prevailing winds will clear out the local downwind area.

REPEATED VISITS are undertaken to the problem areas by government officers (more like clerks) who find no evident pollution and refuse to leave remote timed sensors. In frustration, they may label the people of the neighborhood as "problems" or "nuisances." After repeatedly reporting the problem, once-concerned citizens become apathetic and distrustful of the government. If possible, they move to another neighborhood and a batch of new residents enter the equation. The end result: persistent polluting of the environment and large losses in worker productivity when residents are off sick from their work --- and, increased levels of family abuse and vandalism by pollution- and abuse-irritated children. Chronic illness and hypersensitivity illness frequencies intensify.

The above represent only a few of a great many variations.
Consider what the possibilities are of untangling symptoms and sources when there may be 4 or 6 different forms of polluting influencing YOUR neighborhood. While such forms of pollution have the most dramatic influence within a radius of 4 miles of the offenders, diffusion of the pollutants into larger masses of air covering much larger areas can still encourage societal difficulties.

DIFFUSE CONCENTRATIONS OF POLLUTANTS continue to influence sensitive persons as far away as 60 miles. In these cases, the strength of the pollution and of the symptoms is reduced to such a level that persons influenced are not consciously aware of the presence of pollutants nor the influence such pollutants are having on them. Getting into a pattern of gradually feeling over-tired, irritable, and having a short attention span --- can easily be rationalized by one's Ego as the result of too much work, a failing relationship or marriage, or, aging.

MOST CONVENTIONAL MEDICAL DOCTORS will agree with whatever spurious insecurities and paranoias your consciousness offers. After all, they haven't a clue. Most influenced individuals don't even attempt to contact or report such "new" patterns to their doctor. They are all too familiar with the North American social myths of "women are difficult", "men are pigs", "the seven year itch", "men can't make a commitment", and "if it don't feel right, get out". Epidemics of social dysfunctionality may run parallel with the pollution of your environment.

REMEMBER THIS:
Be aware.
The problems you have may not come from within the people around you, or, from within yourself. Take a long vacation to a (hopefully) cleaner environment (not in the continental USA, Europe, or Asia) and see if the problem is your relationship or your environment. A relationship can be for a lifetime ... a job, career, and specific home address seldom are. Pick your priority carefully.