I am not commenting on VOCs specifically, just pointing out that the logic is flawed.

We should ban or control the substances for which we have strong suspicion, I think most sane people would agree. But where to put the line is difficult. Some trees have pollen that causes asthma attacks and several deaths every year; should we cut them all?

So we need more nuances than black or white.

Now if you want my opinion, I would agree that reducing volatile substances is good; we still need to be careful about the things we put in their place.

I see your point, but I think that you're most likely being overly careful when regulating your exposure to substances. As the person responding to your point about allergies stated, individual's bodies respond to (or don't respond to) substances in different ways.

Peanut allergies are an example of this: a person with allergies is having an immune response to the substance, while most humans don't experience this immune response. This doesn't necessarily indicate that peanuts are always inducing a low level "bad" reaction in people without allergies, just that those with allergies have an immune system that isn't properly reacting to a non-threat. Do you also not eat eggs, shellfish, every kind of tree nut, strawberries, or red meat? Because these are all possible allergies.

This isn't to say that VOC's aren't harmless, because I believe they are. But your assertion that sensitivities in one person indicate something about the entire human population is scientifically false and is most likely casting too wide of a net. You've essentially defined a process with high sensitivity (which means you catch all of the possible bad chemicals/substances), but very low specificity (you often identify substances as harmful when they are not). This is fine for ensuring safety but is unnecessarily restrictive.

I think that all those things are "approach with caution" territory.

Immune system can become sensitized not just to harmful substances, but also to ones "correlated" with them, meaning it's likely they've been exposed to e.g. peanuts which had something bad in them and associated it with the peanuts themselves.

Of course, there's also the fact that when a child is growing up in this VOC environment, their immune system never gets a chance to establish a good baseline for what should and shouldn't be in the system, and that is another reason allergies develop.

Life as a whole is balancing risk and reward. My desire to experience life outweighs my desire for safety.

If I could live infinitely long but never experience anything, what's the point? Safety is the largest danger.

I've done many dangerous things, but where is the experience reward for breathing VOCs?

Certainly riding in a new car is not worth it, is it? Or having a "fresh-smelling" house with nice-looking furniture?

Everything listed there is very enjoyable. New car smell has a name because people like it so much.

Sure, but I can find other enjoyable things which are not proven harmful.

Not to mention the insane amount of "biocide" which happens in the process of producing a new car.

I consider animals and plants to be my close relatives (and dependencies, meaning I won't live long without them), so if I can avoid money-voting for stuff which harms them, I choose that.

Dumb answer, but it's simpler to not have to worry about this stuff. How you balance that with the risk is subjective, but it's not true that there is no downside to avoiding VOCs.