Allergic to the Twentieth Century: The Explosion in Environmental Allergies--From Sick Buildings to Multiple Chemical Sensitivity
Here's how physician Gerald Ross of the Environmental Health Center in Dallas describes multiple chemical sensitivity, or MCS: "Think of a patient as a rain barrel. The water in the barrel is the total load of environmental pollutants that the body must cope with. Then along comes some other source of stress. But the barrel can't hold it, and it pours out. The overflow represents a health problem ... and you get sick." The consequences of the sickness are severe; lives are radically and sometimes permanently disrupted. And the solutions to 20th-century allergies are painstaking and expensive. Worse, some physicians and psychiatrists say that MCS is all in people's heads, and that these people are being abetted by overzealous scientists who ignore basic scientific principles. You don't have to agree with one side or the other to find the assertions inAllergic to the Twentieth Centurycompelling, though; in fact, it may go down better if you start it without any preconceived notions.