Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

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>A 10 bpm drop then rise correlated with moving into and out of the apartment is pretty strong evidence of something.

Sure. 'Something'.

The kind of account this person provided is reminiscent of personal testimonials of individuals who live close to cellular towers. And so far, it is only her account. How do you know she's a credible, objective observer? How do you know she isn't experiencing psychosomatic symptoms? And now she's fixating on 500 gallons of something or other because of some passing reference in a report...Maybe there is something buried in there, so what? Who says that has anything to do with anything?

Also, this line struck me: "it’s an outbreak of new housing developments on toxic land and water with laissez-faire oversight". San Francisco and 'laissez-faire' don't really go together. You know, the city that will deny development license if the proposed building will cast an overly large shadow over a playground. Come on.

Is there something here? Who the heck knows, anything is possible. The fact that so many just want to take her word for it without an ounce of skepticism is a little disappointing.

1) It's not in San Francisco.

2) The development was explicitly expedited with permission of the city.

3) She actually collected data on both tVOCs and her physical symptoms.

There's absolutely room for skepticism, but dismissing it out of hand by equating it to cell-tower crazies is ridiculous.

>There's absolutely room for skepticism

I'll bite. How would that look like in your opinion? In other words, to which part of her story would you apply this skepticism?

>The development was explicitly expedited with permission of the city.

What does that have to do with anything?!!? This is a complete non-sequitur? You're throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.

>but dismissing it out of hand by equating it to cell-tower crazies is ridiculous

Why? People who believe they are harmed by cellular towers present very real symptoms. They are sincere. How do you you know her symptoms aren't psychosomatic?

It has to do with your comment that the city would "deny development license if the proposed building will cast an overly large shadow over a playground." That's clearly not the case, here: they expedited development, rather than denying it.

I said there's room for skepticism because we don't know that it's not psychosomatic. But: she gathered environmental data, and reports completed prior to her moving there had already concluded that "VOCs were above residential limits and, in some cases, even above vapor intrusion risk levels." The developer had made plans for advanced vapor mitigation. One of the reasons the area was a Superfund site in the first place was due to VOCs. In other words, there are a number of external reasons to think this is plausible.

> said there's room for skepticism because we don't know that it's not psychosomatic.

Actually. We don't know anything. Or rather, we only know what she chose to present, already colored to match her conclusion.

How do you know some pertinent information isn't missing from her account?

>But: she gathered environmental data, and reports completed prior to her moving there had already concluded that "VOCs were above residential limits

So what? Let's say VOCs are above residential limits (and I'm not sure about that given that untrained people using consumer sensors are liable to get a fair share of false results or improperly interpreted results) ... BUT OK ... how does she (and you) know that this is what is causing her symptoms?

> In other words, there are a number of external reasons to think this is plausible.

I wouldn't go that far. All we can really say is that she is experiencing symptoms. Those symptoms could be a result of anything (or nothing). Nothing she says passes the smell test because she's engaging in very typical conspiracy theory thinking. She decided that the cause of her symptoms is living in an apartment built on reclaimed land for very flimsy reasons. And then she went around cherry picking evidence to support that conclusion.

I mean, she wrote a message to her apartment management company that stated: "The chemicals are still pouring out full blast" ... are they really? The management company sent an inspector to test for chemical and gas leaks ... and nothing. She hired her own consultant to perform the tests, and that person found nothing... and on and on and on.

She sounds EXACTLY like the people who are convinced cell towers are poisoning them. Every piece of countervailing is ignored by her ... just like a conspiracy theorist. She strikes me as someone who spiraled into this rabbit hole and got absolutely convinced this one thing (out of infinite number of possible things) is causing her symptoms.

Needless to say, I'm skeptical.

I mean, isn't that why she was asking for them to do professional testing?

And if it's a remediation site with VOCs above vapor intrusion risk levels, don't you think the government should investigate?

Seems like a bigger issue that the remediation was rushed through, and no one would respond to complaints that there could be issues with that rushed remediation.

Hazardous waste isn't cell towers. We know hazardous waste can make people sick, and even kill them -- depending on the chemical and exposure. She mentions concern that vinyl chloride was there above vapor intrusion risk levels and no one would tell her why it wasn't cleaned up. That sounds nothing like EMF panic.

>isn't that why she was asking for them to do professional testing?

If you read her account, there were multiple tests done, by her hired expert and one contracted by the building management company, not including the testing done by Roux. She didn't accept any of the results because they didn't match her conclusion.

>Seems like a bigger issue that the remediation was rushed through

Rushed through how? This is California where nothing gets built in any reasonable time. But again, what does this have to do with anything? There is zero evidence that her symptoms are caused by the building, or anything related to it. The author simply decided it must be the cause. Must. And now, for some reason, we're debating this non sequitur.

> She mentions concern that vinyl chloride was there above vapor intrusion risk levels and no one would tell her why it wasn't cleaned up.

An initial investigation by EIK had 1 sample of 17 that had vinyl chloride above screening levels, which raised VOC from off-site sources (the nearby superfund site) as a potential concern. As a result, Roux took more soil vapor samples several years later, and none of their measurements had vinyl chloride levels above the screening threshold. Maybe this process was rushed or shoddy or something (I wouldn't know or be able to guess), but from the EIR it sounds like Roux did the testing and didn't measure any significant VOCs.

and after this, they put in the system for mitigating vapor intrusion anyway.

Sure we know that hazardous waste can make people sick, but what we expect is that it would make dozens or hundreds of people in this apartment complex sick--not just one.

VOC sensors are a kind of catch all, and consumer brands often have sensors that aren’t not of the highest quality. Somethings are more toxic than others, but you won’t get any useful breakdown from them. These nighttime spikes and variability over the day are consistent with my own use of these machines, but I do not suffer anything like what she describes.

my VOC sensor goes off the scale when my dishwasher is running.

Interesting. But it makes sense: Vaporization of detergents and other elements in the water.

Some sources: [1] https://www.haywardscore.com/articles/is-your-dishwasher-imp... [2] https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/826

Does this cause you concern or make you curious?

>There's absolutely room for skepticism, but dismissing it out of hand by equating it to cell-tower crazies is ridiculous.

Dismissing her symptoms as completely fabricated is ridiculous but I think it's entirely reasonable to dismiss her explanation for them out of hand because it is entirely on-par with cell-tower crazies spouting off nonsense about things they don't understand.

She was on the third floor, no one else is having symptoms, lead and arsenic contamination beneath a foot of dirt and a big thick concrete foundation is never going to plausibly cause very high VOC levels only in one third floor apartment. She even dismisses expert opinions that disagree with her idea as "some expert wordsmithing and spin". She even claims that it's contaminated the tap water, as if it must just come from the groundwater.

I find the claim that there's a high VOC level in an apartment causing numerous health problems completely reasonable. It's the blatantly ridiculous leap of blaming remediated soil contamination that makes me dismayed. Quite frankly it makes people dismiss real environmental health problems by throwing in that nonsense along with it.

There's tons of valid explanations here, maybe when the flooring was replaced they went with a different supplier for that faux wood laminate and it's off gassing formaldehyde. Maybe the carpet in some part of the apartment had a similar issue. Maybe the drywall had to be replaced in that unit in the past and it's contaminated akin to the imported Chinese drywall back in the 00s. Maybe the paint stripper the apartment complex maintenance worker used was based on DCM and he accidently tipped over the can and they just said "screw it, we're putting new flooring over it anyways".

There's a thousand different valid explanations here, her explanation is nowhere on the map.

It's also entirely plausible that every apartment DOES have high VOC levels, but she is the only one reacting to them. Or that other people are also reacting to them and haven't figured out why yet.

> How do you know she isn't experiencing psychosomatic symptoms?

Is there evidence that psychosomatic effects can be so strong as to account for a measurable 10% drop in resting heart rate? Especially since her symptoms appeared before she even started measuring air quality.

Dude - absolutely. Your brain is a powerful and weird thing, and simply thinking of a thing can influence your autonomic nervous system, changing breathing patterns, heart rate, blood pressure, etc. Ask anyone that has general anxiety or a panic disorder.

Anxiety and panic tend to cause an increase in heart rate, though, not a drop. The symptoms also started before she had any suspicion about what could be the problem.

They can manifest in different ways, but tend to increase X, yes.

started before she had any suspicion about what could be the problem

That is so common. As someone who has regular panic attacks, it takes months to admit that there is something wrong with you, that it’s not a form of covid, no you’re not dying, you can breathe even without concentrating, your appendix had already been cut out, and the only thing you need is a psychiatrist. Being smart and able to analyze some random numbers and events only adds to the problem, because you sound reasonable for much longer time. For your entire life you believe that you are a perfect error-free mechanism that cannot be wrong. Of course it takes time to realize that it’s not true (and never was, really).

Sorry, I don’t understand your point. Mine was simply that a belief in toxic air could not have caused the symptoms to appear since she didn’t have that belief yet.

Chances are that the other, core (unconscious) belief caused the symptoms, and then her consciousness made up the toxic air theory to fit everything together, because some VOC counter had some digits on it and there was a burial of unknown waste down the road and something smells at 3 am. E.g. when moved in, she have seen a clock in the hall or a doorbell that subtly reminded her about some event in the past when her self-esteem was hit hard and she felt worthless. Now every time she walks in, it kicks in and causes a set of psychosomatic symptoms. That’s how it works, if this is the case, and that is what I referred to as “so common”. People often talk about “bad” places, bad energy, more psychotic ones may think that it’s their neighbors irradiating them. White coat syndrome is very “popular” as well, because doctors may get associated with harm and pain deep inside. We are constantly attacked by these associations that make us do [strange] choices or have preferences (pen color, perfume smell, facial features, etc), but only hard ones cause sickness, because they make our unconsciousness burn.

It’s very hard to realize that an issue may be completely inside your very smart and logical mind. It must be something in the air, or germs/viruses, or vibrations. I bet that at least one of the doctors suggested her to check her mental health, but we always dismiss that, because we are fine, alright. We are not the type of person who could need that, gosh, that’s laughable. Only idiots and schizophrenics may have mental health issues, not us. Of course this little nuance couldn’t make it into the article.

E.g. in my case it took nine months of occasionally “dying”, a bunch of pricey and unpleasant procedures, then two more weeks of the chronic state and three doctors suggesting it, before I decided to go check my mind. Symptoms rate dropped 50% after the first appointment and 45% more after I completed my first “homework”.

Yeah, anxiety increases heart rate not lowers it. Her heart rate while living there looked to be around 50bpm in the charts, which is apparently "low" -- not just for her personally, but medically low.

High heart rate: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/175241#causes (anxiety)

Low heart rate: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/is-a-slow-heart-rate-good... (nothing psychological)

As a runner, when I’m in marathon training mode, my rest heart rate is very close to 40. Pro or very serious athletes can have a resting heart rate near 30. It’s actually a great way to tell your current fitness level (if you know your own baselines)

You would need to know a lot more before you worry about 50 being low.

And yes, I had to get an EKG and the doctor raised his eye brow at my heart rate, but I said I run and he immediately Moved on.

>Is there evidence that psychosomatic effects can be so strong as to account for a measurable 10% drop in resting heart rate?

I have no clue. Maybe. Maybe not.

What doesn't pass the smell test for me is that the author fixated on what she thinks is the cause of her symptoms for non-rational, arbitrary reasons. She decided her symptoms MUST be the result of her building being built on reclaimed land. Why? Well, she got a consumer sensor that shows her something and therefore that must be it. Maybe whatever that VOC sensor is showing has NOTHING to do with anything she has.

It's reminiscent of conspiracy theory thinking, where the conspiracy theorist encounters some unknown phenomena and instead of saying "I don't know", they decide on a solution (whether that be aliens, or illuminati or living on reclaimed land) and they cherry pick and interpret evidence in a way that supports their ad hoc conclusion.

How do you figure? She apparently had a lot of medical testing that showed something was wrong with her physically but the doctors had no idea what. Sounds like this was long before she knew anything was off with the property.

The article didn't make any concrete accusations and she was just asking for an investigation. She didn't say causation, she said correlation. "I began to think that there was an important correlation between this data and my symptoms." Even when she saw high VOCs, she didn't assume it was the remediation site. " I knew the situation was likely going to be complicated and that the tVOC readings on my personal monitors were not going to be conclusive on their own, but my gut told me something was terribly wrong." She was open to the site not being the cause. "I was thinking: If you don’t want me to be worried about this chemical’s impact to my health, you should tell me exactly why it wasn’t included in the clean-up despite being above residential limits." + "So, what made me sick? While in the end everyone agreed it was VOCs, I may never know for certain if it was the chemicals in the soil or groundwater and, if so, which ones."

Also, she mentioned a few times that doctors, government, and even Irvine Company's public relations person admitted VOCs made her sick, but just didn't know where the VOCs came from.

None of that sounds like a conspiracy theory.

>he didn't say causation, she said correlation. "I began to think that there was an important correlation between this data and my symptoms."

Read on, because she then becomes convinced and send a message to her property manager that starts off with "The chemicals are still pouring out full blast." and starts her crusade until the management company lets her out of her lease (she wonders why they would do such a thing, but from sidelines, it's obvious - they don't want to deal with her anymore because even after they paid a contractor to test her apartment and surrounding area, she's not satisfied).

>She was open to the site not being the cause. "I was thinking: If you don’t want me to be worried about this chemical’s impact to my health, you should tell me exactly why it wasn’t included in the clean-up despite being above residential limits."

Are we reading the same thing? She's already down the rabbit hole by this point. She's asking non sequiturs and setting irrational standards. She wants answers to a thing that has nothing to do with anything she's going through. Again, there were multitude of reports, tests, and assessments that deemed the site safe - she just doesn't believe any of them (almost like she's asserting a consipracy)

>Also, she mentioned a few times that doctors, government, and even Irvine Company's public relations person admitted VOCs made her sick, but just didn't know where the VOCs came from.

Are you sure they did? And if they did, how would they know? And if they didn't, why would they challenge her? They don't know the situation. If you're a government employee tasked with handling her complaint, at some level all you can do is be empathetic and courteous. She seems to mistake this for agreement. None of it is convincing at all.

Again, I have no idea what the cause of symptoms are but the way she became convinced that this MUST be the answer 'smells' off to me.

Her quasi-experiment [1], which resembles an interrupted time series design [2, 3], does tend to support a causal implication of “living in that apartment”. There seems to be something about living in that apartment that is causing those symptoms. From there, hypothesizing that it could be the air contents doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch to me.

[1] https://sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Ashley-Gjov...

[2] https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h2750

[3] https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/chapter/quasi-experime...

Google is failing me but someone posted an journal article a while back of a person in a clinical trial who basically “crashed” (heart rate and blood pressure dropped very low) and they started resuscitation efforts until they realize he got a placebo and the symptoms went away.

> Is there evidence that psychosomatic effects can be so strong as to account for a measurable 10% drop in resting heart rate?

Yes, meditation. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333930474_Efficacy_...

Also panic attacks can mess up your heart rate quite a bit.

The meditation explanation doesn’t really seem applicable here. The effects obtained through meditation are through the removal of stress, not an increase in it: it would seem doubtful that within days of moving in, she suddenly started meditating and it had all the negative effects that she described instead of the expected benefits and she didn’t make the connection and she stopped meditating and causing this to herself within a week of moving out.

I didn't mean meditation specifically. Just a proof that psychosomatic effect can be that large. I don't think we have enough details to discuss how likely that is or other details.

> San Francisco and 'laissez-faire' don't really go together.

And they totally didn’t authorize a residential high rise building with foundation on sand that started to lean... oh wait https://www.sfgate.com/news/editorspicks/article/SF-s-sinkin...

The sand was well-known and it had a foundation that was supposed to handle it. So that’s a poor example of regulation overlooking something.

Are you trying to argue that San Francisco is a laissez-faire developer utopia?

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