If you are chemically sensitive, it is important to know where your specific troublemakers are found so that you can try and avoid them. Often you start out like a detective, when you first learn that you are chemically sensitive, trying to track down the contents of every product or item that you use, to find those you can tolerate.
The process soon becomes overwhelming. Take a look at Table 5, which gives information about chemicals that commonly cause allergy and sensitivity – formaldehyde, chlorine, ammonia and rosin. Formaldehyde, also called formalin, has many, many uses. It is used as a preservative in cosmetics, cleaning products and pharmaceuticals; as a coating, it confers wet strength and grease resistance, so it is used extensively in paper production and as a fabric finish. It is used as an adhesive resin in all kinds of manufacture, and as a protective treatment on some building materials. It gasses off from some types of plastic foams, melamine sheeting, from computer plastics and some car interiors. In short, you find it almost everywhere in modern life. However, not every kind of cosmetic or cleaning product, nor every type of product named, contains formaldehyde, but how would you know, and what if you are also sensitive to other chemicals that may or may not be contained in things that also contain formaldehyde?
Chlorine, ammonia and rosin are also other common troublemakers. Each of these chemicals is potentially found where other potentially aggressive chemicals are also found – in household cleaners, cosmetics, toiletries, paper, fabric finishes and pharmaceuticals. Moreover, these chemicals are not necessarily found in all products in any category – not all soaps contain rosin, not all toothpastes contain ammonia – but soon you realise that you begin to feel quietly (or not so quietly) desperate about working out where chemicals are and what to use -let alone detecting what you react to.
A much more helpful and workable approach is to turn things around and to look at areas of your life where you come into contact with chemicals and to work out what the major potential troublemakers are in each.
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