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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

> sleeping on top of a damp, chemically treated pallet is practically a worst case.

Worse than sleeping out in the rain?

Is it wise to compound homelessness with chronic health issues and permanent disability? Methyl Bromide is frequently used for pest mitigation of pallets and their contents, and pallet cargo can also leak onto pallets (and you won't be none the wiser).

Even in an absorbent material like wood Methyl Bromide will dissipate within a week. It's very rare for a pallet to be discarded within a week of being shipped and but if you are super cautious you can just wait a week.

Toluene, Benzene and Ethylene dichloride on the other hand are used in all sorts of materials like glues, and will be out gassed for months. Kids toys, phones, shoes, furniture, paint - normal houses (as opposed to Occupod's) are full of them. Provided you are little careful with the painting, I'd take the Occupod any day.

In the case of chemically treated pallets quite simply yes.

What is so bad about chemicals?

Skin burns, lung damage?

People smoke and do lots of other stuff that is unhealthy in the long term but that gives them what they need short term. I'm pretty sure that given the choice between sleeping in the rain (which I could not) and sleeping in a shelter with some probability (probably unknown to me) of issues in the longer term I would pick the shelter.

Also, I thought the design was rather light on ventilation and I wonder how you'd deal with things like mold and fungi. All in all this is a crappy solution for a real problem, props to the person that came up with it but in reality this is not a solution, merely more problems and a way to declare the problem solved so we can pretend it is no longer a problem.

Btw, look for the letters "HT" on pallets when you want to re-purpose them, that indicates the wood was heat treated rather than chemically treated.

The whoosh is that simply using the term "chemical" as something that is bad is irresponsible.

I get it. But that's an old pedantic saw. I understood from context perfectly well it was about the particular chemicals used to treat cheap wood pallets.

Yes. Rain doesn't contain methyl bromide, which can cause cancer and permanent damage to the lungs, kidneys, and nervous system.

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