Multiple Chemical Sensitivity

Ailments, illnesses, and syndromes of unknown etiologies.

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity

Multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) , also known as "20th Century Syndrome", "Environmental illness", " Sick Building Syndrome ", Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance (IEI), can be defined as a "chronic, recurring disease caused by a person's inability to tolerate an environmental chemical or class of foreign chemicals" according to the NIH National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences web site.

Cullen, et al, of Yale Environmental Medicine has published a definition of MCS, making diagnosis possible. However, etiology is hotly debated. MCS is a non-standard medical diagnosis in the US for people with unexplained allergy-like symptoms. Conventional medicine does not typically recognize this diagnosis [Yale Environmental Medicine, among others, provides diagnosis of MCS], because to date there is no definitive test for diagnosis or proven scientific mechanism. Symptoms may be explainable by other means such as more conventional allergies, infectious disease, or psychological reaction to stress.

There is argument ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12046597/#3 ) that MCS is a purely psychosomatic disease. In tests of dozens of people who where diagnosed (by alternative health practitioners) as having MCS, none of them showed any reaction to suspected substances when exposed to them without their knowledge, though they did show allergic reactions when they knew they were being exposed. They also showed allergic reactions to injections of (biologically inert) saline solution or exposure to purified air when they were falsely told they were being exposed to suspect substances. In short, there was no correlation between actual exposure and reaction, only between perceived exposure and reaction.

It should be noted that illnesses such as asthma and (normal) allergies were also once considered to be psychosomatic.

Allergist Theron G. Randolph (1906-1995) is generally seen as the 'inventor' of the term and introducing this condition to the public. It was he who first speculated that exposure to modern synthetic chemicals was the cause. Allergic reactions to minute traces of chemicals goes against what is known about the correlation between dose and effect. Randolph, however, theorized that the human body is like a barrel filling up with small or even minute doses of chemicals until it is full. Any further exposure will then cause allergic reactions, like the straw that broke the camels' back. Science recognizes that there are chemicals that build up in the body (such as mercury ), but these do not cause allergic reactions. They can, though, cause organ failure, such as failure of the liver (which is involved in storing these chemicals) or the kidneys (involved in filtering them out). Some chemicals are also stored in body fat. These effects have never been found in MCS-patients, either suggesting that they actually do not suffer from the effects of chemicals or that there is another mechanism (possibly the one Randolph proposed) to blame for their symptoms. People who treat MCS generally identify themselves as "clinical ecologists", and many belong to the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, which Randolph founded in 1965 as the Society for Clinical Ecology. Clinical Ecology is not a recognised field of medical science.

An alternative sensitization mechanism has been proposed by H.R. Eriksen and H. Ursin in a paper publicized April 2004. They propose the term 'subjective health complaints' for MCS and a number of other conditions that are similarly vague, such as epidemic fatigue, chronic musculoskeletal pain, chronic low back pain, chronic fatigue syndrome, and fibromyalgia. According to them: 'These complaints are particularly common in individuals with low coping and high levels of helplessness and hopelessness'. They suggest that: 'These complaints are based on sensations from what in most people are normal physiological processes. In some individuals these sensations become intolerable. In some cases it may signal somatic disease, in most cases not'. In their conclusion they suggest that the psychobiological mechanisms for this is sensitization in neural loops maintained by sustained attention and arousal.

People diagnosed with MCS suffer widely assorted symptoms blamed on exposure to trace levels of environmental chemicals. No two MCS patients will experience exactly the same symptoms.

Symptoms

Suspect Chemicals

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