My apartment was built on toxic waste

Not to be indelicate, but the thing that reliably spikes my air monitor is passing gas. Would match up with the nausea and other symptoms. Not to mention the "earthquake" hallucination

That said, it's hard to argue with the measured heart rate. A 10 bpm drop then rise correlated with moving into and out of the apartment is pretty strong evidence of something. It just seems very unlikely it's from ground contamination.

The only way to see what going on is by doing another Phase II ESA study. But those are expensive and you will need the approval of the owner which will be unlikely.

But the fact that it's new construction, and that the readings peaked at 3am would lead me to expect it's high-VOC construction materials, and the VOC's are accumulating while people have their windows closed at night and/or the HVAC system circulates less. I also wonder if she by any chance purchased a new memory foam mattress and/or pillows when she moved -- some people (like me) are horribly affected by the VOC's in them, even after many months.

Building on a previous Superfund site could be an entirely separate and coincidental issue here.

My experience with VOC's has also taught me, don't stick around and try to fight it -- just leave ASAP!! (or toss your mattress no matter how much you paid for it). And the fact that her doctors never suggested VOC's could be the culprit seems astonishingly negligent to me. I'm so sorry she had to endure these symptoms for months and months without anyone suggesting, hey go stay at a friend's for a few nights and see if it gets better.

I don’t disagree with what you are saying overall but you reference this “1 out of 1,800” point at least three times in your comment. It’s important to keep in mind that it’s not necessarily relevant as any number of people in those 1,800 units may or may not be experiencing a variety of issues related to this.

In my opinion, that makes it completely plausible that a problem relating to that tank could be so localized that it will only affect one tenant.

I'm not saying her problem was due to the 500 gallon tank. All I'm saying is that if it is, then it is not unbelievable that it affected only one (or a small number) of tenants.

So you're saying that real patients don't take selfies with equipment on? What an odd thing to say. Like why would that somehow prove the validity of her story?

They recently lost thier operating permit and need to relocate in a year or so - so this is a real thing and not just the collective imagination of a Facebook group of local homeowners.

However, people report crazy symptoms from "the smell". Migraines, hives, etc. Not being able to sleep, having to rewash clothes because they think the dryer air intake made them stink.

I think the vast, vast majority of these symptoms and effects are people outraged that their very expensive home has an odour, only detectable outside, that they don't like. The stress of not getting thier way immediately leads them to these other health issues in my opinion. And it takes thier argument up a notch (prove they don't have a headache).

Anyway, my opinion is not popular. :)

I don't like the smell either and I'm glad they are moving the facility but it was just a bad smell.

Her taking a photo wearing medical equipment is extremely important. It would be normal to include it in the story. Also, people post their lives on social media as part of their journey. Being extremely sick would certainly be part of her journey.

This is very much https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood

In addition, this woman has, at least, a full arm sleeve tattoo.

Tattoo inks are NOT FDA certified and the health side effects are unstudied and unknown.

Yeah, most people don't have a reaction, but it's highly probable that some do and she may simply be one of the unlucky ones.

There is poison that kills you and then there’s poison that makes your life 1% worse. Most people don’t notice or can’t get a deterministic diagnosis, a small number of people are disproportionally effected.

This is where we are in many places medically. The big problems are easy, the small problems are hard.

AMD, Hitachi, Applied Materials

Again, not doubting her story. I very much think her problem needs to be addressed. But, it's not just an "evil rental company" problem, these huge tech companies directly across the street from this waste had to have known about this too.

There are of course drawbacks with consumer devices compared to medical equipment, but there are also a lot of medical issues that come and go, possibly with time of day effects or specific triggers. Using only a few brief snapshots that come from official doctor visits to draw any conclusion is a huge drawback of much of modern medicine, and biomedical research is slowly trending towards addressing this.

If one is careful in buying high quality consumer devices and doing some sanity checks with their data collection process I feel it can already be informative. It can be a great screener and guide people towards what type of specialist they should see.

For some tests there are "take home" medical versions that can get a more official (albeit still much briefer than personal equipment) dataset. However it can often be difficult to get a doctor to order based on vague symptoms, and it is non-ideal for patients to go on such a fishing expedition through official channels, especially the way medical billing/insurance works in the US.

I get there is concern about patients reading into the data too much, and yes there will be some people with psychiatric problems that could be enabled. But I think the benefits far outweigh the costs. In addition to early detection of issues in healthy people, it would also have a lot of upside for people with inexplicable chronic illness.

Yes people like that are vulnerable and will cling to things, but guess what - giving them a shitty label like Fibromyalgia only drives them to alternative medicine scams and toxic internet forums. It's human nature to look for alternatives when something has failed, and so why not at least channel that in to something potentially productive? In some cases they might even find a real diagnosis, but in general it could lead to actual research on these very poorly defined diseases.

I don't know anything about sick building syndrome so can't really comment on that, but assuming the person didn't lie that would be remarkably coincidental timing with the move in and move out dates. Perhaps the toxin they identified is irrelevant, but there sure does seem to be something odd going on while they lived in that apartment.

They also are clinically fine again now, so even if it was some weird psychological thing, moving out of the building fixed the problem and therefore the data lead her to the right "treatment".

I guess my point is that maybe you're right that this wasn't sick building syndrome, and maybe that makes this article a net negative, because it could lead others to look for that where it isn't. But another takeaway from the article is just the more abstract story about investigating your problems so that you're more equipped to handle them. There can be non-medical/low risk interventions or mitigating strategies, and even in this instance it did also drive her towards relevant doctors (although it's impossible to say whether she sought out legitimate doctors since there is probably a higher ratio of quacks specializing in environmental toxins)

I would be cautious of taking actions like these as it can have some pretty bad knock on effects. I'm on the board of my condo corporation for a high rise in Canada and we have seen topics like this come up from time to time.

To help control odour between units, the air handling system in our building is designed to draw air into the hallways, from the hallways to the units, to outside. The idea of routing airflow like this is to try and prevent smell transfer between units, but the airflow also has a purpose to help control moisture buildup, which IIRC gets worse if there is no airflow, and can lead to mold. So we discourage blocking the airflow from the way the building was designed, and property management has advised us in other buildings this had been observed to lead to severe moisture problems.

And we have had issue pop up with trash smell and the like. Where that's happened to us is two causes, there is a sort of air damper on the garbage chute, and it's gotten jammed on us IIRC. The other is our garbage room opens to take the bins out, and if the doors are left open for an extended period and the wind hits the building right it can draw air through the garbage room and through the chute. This can also occur when folks leave their trash blocking the chute door open allowing more air to flow between the chute and hallways.

Stuff like that can be hard to figure out, because if the garbage room is left open every day, it doesn't always happen due to the wind or possibly other factors.

The third one we get sometimes is smoking smells, which is usually caused by a smoker not wanting to use their balcony in winter, so instead they go into the stairwells. We traced one of those across more than 20 floors once. It can be difficult to trace those ones, so it comes with a lot of sending broadcast messages and work to trace down.

I get not all property managers are super helpful, but if they get a few reports from different individuals and can link it to some action like having the garbage room open can hopefully have them solve the real problem.

I would guess that the real issue is that it would be difficult to prove that the leasing company was aware of the issues, or even that the environmental issues are the cause of this person’s problems.

The topic of what has come to be known as “sick building syndrome” is a thorny legal issue because many times it’s not easy to prove that the building is causing the person’s problem. Most commonly, the issue is that the building is only triggering issues for a single person, while others in the same building are fine. It’s also difficult to separate out the psychosomatic complaints from people who believe their issues are from the building when they might actually be from something else. Doubting these patients publicly is very taboo, but medically it’s actually not uncommon for this to happen.

How can that be legal?

I mean a legal system which allows people to trick and force people into not being able to protect themself if they are scammed is completely broken IMHO.

She got sick when she moved in? What new furniture did she buy?

That's a good point. The article dwells on the remediations done to the site that admittedly may not be effective, but didn't mention furniture in the unit. It could be her couch or a cleaner she's using.

I think it’s commendable that the author is trying to quantify her health issues, but I also don’t think she makes a very strong case that the cause is toxic waste in the ground as opposed to some other issue.

It is irresponsible in my opinion for her to write an article titled “I thought I was dying: My apartment was built on toxic waste” without more concrete evidence. If she is wrong, this could cause undue panic and suffering for other residents in the area, as well as monetary damages to the building’s owner.

Of course there is also the possibility that she is right, too. But given the severity of her symptoms, and the number of residents in the complex, I would expect to see more people showing up at local hospitals with similar issues. I think the correct course of action for a person in this situation would basically be to report the issue to local health authorities and the building’s management, and move out as soon as possible.

I can write something about it if there's any interest.

What I found surprised but pleased me: The CO2 levels at my desk are quite low, spike at night when HVAC is off (when the building is empty), but generally during daytime are about the same as being at home with windows open in a suburban area.

Granted, it's been more than a year since I've sat at my desk... But still, it was nice to know.

These agencies should not be concerned with anything other than facts and any attempt to interfere with them (as in balancing business friendliness with facts) should be considered a serious crime against the safety of the population.