The place I was moving out from was an old house made some time right after WWII.  It had hard wood floors, no dish washer, and an inificiant electric furnace.   At the time I didn’t like it very much.  I was about to discover what a blessing it had been.

 

The first place I moved into was a one bedroom apartment from mid 70’s construction.  It had shag carpet and aluminum window frames.  The price and location were good and it seemed to be an excellent place to live.  I was wrong.  A few hours after I moved in I started to feel awful.  I couldn’t concentrate; I was groggy and slept almost every moment I was in that apartment.  I hated coming home each day.  Thankfully the landlord let me out of my lease and I found another apartment the following month.

 

I never fully determined what was effecting me in that apartment but I did form a few educated guesses; the carpet and perhaps the window frames.  During the 1970’s a lot of carpet was ‘finished’ with highly toxic chemicals.  There was a rash of people who got sick from their carpets.   It was found that the makers of these carpets were leaving formaldehyde (and other unpleasant things) behind in the in the manufacturing process*.  The other most likely culprit was the aluminum window panes.  To be clear it was not primarily the exposed metal but it was the mold that constantly grew on the aluminum. These type of window panes are no longer manufactured because of exactly this sort of trouble.

 

The next place I moved into was even worse then the first.  It was a third floor, one bedroom that was constructed in the mid 1980’s. I would leave the apartment and feel pretty good only to return and have some the worst chemical sensitivity reactions I have ever experienced.  Most of the time my reactions to things cause me to feel mentally thick, groggy, and tired, but this was something different.  It affected me on an emotional level I had not yet experienced.  Within a half an hour of coming home from work it felt as if my soul would break into a thousand pieces.  For no other reason, apart from a reaction to my environment, I would feel deep emotional pain.  Depression and despair so strong it actually hurt physically would come over me and not leave again until I went outside for at least an hour.  I did what I could to minimize what was going on.  I kept the windows open as mush as possible.  I purchased an indoor air filter and kept it running 24/7. I attempted to not come home as much as possible.  I talked to my new landlords but this time I was stuck, I would have to ride out the entire six month lease.

 

Again, I never did find out what exactly was causing such a bad reaction in that place but years later I did come up with one good possibility, particleboard.  About five years after I moved out from that place I read an article about how particleboard was being used in a lot of new home construction since the 1980’s, and how it may be causing some problems.  If you look at a house made before the 1950’s most of the kitchen construction, such as the cupboards and cabinets are all made of real unprocessed wood.  After the 1980’s, almost all of the same objects are made from particleboard.**  The two main problems with particleboard are the toxic glues used to hold all the wood ‘chips’ together and other chemicals used as preservatives to keep the wood from decomposing.  Once again the culprit was, for a time, formaldehyde used as a preservative.  Thankfully today many of the chemicals used in the past are no longer allowed in modern construction.

 

My third attempt at a place to live that year paid off.  I found a studio apartment in a 1920’s brick building.  The apartment had hard wood floors, solid wood construction in the kitchen and did not seem to cause me problems.  I had found a place of my own that I liked and I could be in charge of what came into the space.  I was still not at a point where I felt great all the time.  I had a way to go before I would again feel unaffected by my environment, but for the first time that year I believed I was capable of getting there.

 

 

*As an aside to this point, what can be put into carpets and carpet pads these days have become strictly regulated due to these problems.  I have been in several places that have recently had there carpet redone and have been surprised that I have not reacted badly to these environments. 

 

**I have since found out that America and Europe have very different ideas about what is toxic and not.  I have tried several different American made items that contain particleboard and have not found any that work for me.  The good news is that Items bought from Ikea are all made with the European Union standards.  I now own several pieces of furniture containing particleboard that were made in Europe, and have had no problems with them.  (Well… they often do space me out for the first couple of days but this passes quickly as they ‘air out’)