“Sick building syndrome” is a difficult topic to discuss because it’s very difficult to prove a connection between the vague symptoms and the building. In many cases, only a single person seems susceptible to the claimed building issues. In this case, the apartment complex appears to have over 1,800 units, which makes it surprising that only a single person is experiencing such dramatic effects.
Unfortunately, doubting these people’s stories is taboo online so I’m going to tread carefully. However, when only 1 unit out of 1800 apartments (presumably 2000-3000 total residents considering multi-bedroom units) is experiencing severe and dramatic symptoms, my first guess would not be the soil under the foundation. I would be looking for building materials or chemical spills in that specific apartment unit.
Also, I’m not suggesting that we discount this person’s story. Their symptoms are certainly very real in that they are suffering, but the selfie of the person wearing medical equipment in front of a mirror combined with measurements from consumer devices as evidence should be approached with caution. There is a relatively new phenomenon casually known as Munchausen by Internet where some patients are drawn to the increasing attention they can garner by sharing, and unfortunately exaggerating, their stories on the internet. These patients often post selfies of themselves wearing medical equipment, in doctor’s offices, or in hospital beds. More commonly, typical patients prefer not to be photographed with medical equipment or in medical facilities. Again, I’m not suggesting we disbelieve this person, but it’s important that we consider the bigger picture (1800 unit apartment complex, apparently only one case of severe symptoms?) before accepting a single person’s analysis of what is causing her issues.
Mistaken “sick building syndrome” diagnoses can actually be very detrimental to patients who mistake other illnesses as being caused by their buildings, as they hyperfocus on their presumed explanation to the exclusion of following more typical diagnostic work ups that would help them eliminate more common explanations for those symptoms.
To add to this she says she's in apartment 349 which is on the third floor. Very hard to imagine off gassing from the ground creates hazardous conditions three floors up.
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.
>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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
> 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.
>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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I find it interesting that there were spikes of readings at certain times of day and night. Coupled with the information that the apartments have a VoC barrier, my intuition is that there is a timer somewhere that turns on a fan to clear out the VoC capture space created by the barrier and exhaust the contaminated air to the outside.
If the VoC that's bothering her is heavier than air, it could be being blown upwards from the ground level and then settling back over the building and falling back down and finding its way back into her apartment somehow, like through the range hood, dryer exhaust, plumbing stacks, open windows, or just cracks due to poor craftsmanship.
If she was still at the site, I would recommend looking for what appears to be an exhaust vent of some kind that might be tied to the VOC barrier system and putting a sensor there and seeing if the readings correlate to the timeline of unusual readings in her home
I had a condo in San Francisco. The building was on an old gas station site. The site remediation included a vapor barrier placed below the foundation, and a vent pipe from the soil to 10 feet (I don't remember the exact height, but it was prescripted in the permit) over the roof. Said soil vent had a fan that ran nightly exactly as you suggest, again prescripted by the permit to continue for at least 10 years. So I find this quite plausible. Perhaps her apartment was next to a similar vent pipe which had a leak.
Gas stations are this big elephant that nobody speaks of. Essentially every gas station site has polluted soil that makes the site either uninhabitable or uneconomical to remediate.
Huh, that's really surprising. How does it happen? I assume it has something to do with gasoline, but I was under the assumption that most of the gasoline at gas stations was stored in giant underground concrete containers.
Fuel tanks leak. Cars leak. Waste fluids (fuel, oil, brake fluid, transmission fluid, coolant, refrigerant) leak and are improperly disposed of. Fuel spills when being pumped in or out of tanks.
Until 1996, leaded gasoline was generally legal in the United States (California phased it out in 1992). It remains legal as avgas and possibly for some specialised uses. Tetraeythyl lead is a toxic heavy metal compound thought to be a factor in the rise in urban crime, a phenomenon which traces its use and phase-out closely, though lagged about 20 years.
Among the compounds used as an alternative to lead was MTBE (Methyl tert-butyl ether), an oxygenate and ground-water contaminant, itself banned as a fuel additive in 2004 (2002 in California), though again it remains legal for other uses.
Petrol (gasoline) itself is often formulated with numerous other additives, and "is a mixture of a large number of different hydrocarbons", averaging hydrocarbon length of about 5-6. ("Naptha", shorter chains make more volatile fuels, longer chains heavier, e.g., kerosene, diesel fuel, fuel oil, bunker oil. "Octane" is an 8-chain compound with lower volatility, increasing the ignition point and reducing engine knocking due to premature ignition.) Various of the naturally-occuring, added, and refining-induced compounds themselves may be harmful or toxic, and include VOCs.
Generally the tanks are fiberglass. I don't know why they leak. From reading site reports, my impression is these leaks are usually detected by the tax authorities, who can see that the reported sales of fuel don't add up to the reported deliveries of fuel. See page 40 of this report for an idea of what an underground fuel tank looks like.
There's an old illustration from Popular Mechanics that suggests dumping used motor oil into holes in the ground. At one time that was considered a reasonable way to dispose of it.
Psychosomatic issues, while ‘in someone’s head’ cause very real physical problems that are quite measurable. Our brain and our bodies are tied together in ways that are not convenient to think about, frankly.
Just like the placebo effect causes real, very significant healing effects, even a subconscious association with a place as ‘bad’ causes real, very significant detrimental effects that are externally measurable.
Essentially believing you have been given something that will make you healthier, can reduce the stress responses, pain perception and other issues that may be making the problem worse. In some cases it can be enough to allow the immune system to get better traction and objectively get healthier faster than with no medicine.
The wild part is that the body releases internal painkillers when they get some fake (or real) ones, and that this reaction can be blocked by naloxone, indicating that it's a physical response.
No, the mind can have a significant effect on the body. For example this webmd article on placebo cites studies where what the participant was told about a pill (stimulant vs sleep aid) effected heart rate, blood pressure and reaction time in opposite directions. https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/what-is-the-placebo-ef...
Nah, it works the other direction too. People expecting side effects from a placebo often get them- though you could argue that many side effects are common symptome now being associated with the drug. Still, the placebo effect beats no treatment per https://ebmh.bmj.com/content/5/1/15 or https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12535498/
Actually, the studies you cite seem to be in line with this Scientific American article: no objective benefits, but some efficacy on subjective benefits and pain reduction.
It isn't. People recover better with a placebo than with nothing. There are studies that even show that some placebo are better than other based on the price, the colour, who prescribed it, ...
Actually, out-gassing inside a building tends to travel upward. It's not unusual for the higher floors to have higher levels of gases than the lower levels. For gases to sink, they have to be heavier than air. Radon gas for example is 7.5 times heavier than air. Carbon monoxide is slightly lighter than air which is why detectors for it are better placed higher up in a room than on the floor.
Regarding the heart rate increase, there's an official diagnosis called "White Coat Syndrome" where your blood pressure rises when it's being measured. To rule out actual high blood pressure, they have to use things like 24 hour automated blood pressure tests.
I'm _very_ aware of the placebo effect, very scientifically minded, etc. I have white coat syndrome and have had to do quite a few of those 24 hour blood pressure tests over the years to make sure I'm not developing the real thing.
> she's in apartment 349 which is on the third floor. Very hard to imagine off gassing from the ground creates hazardous conditions three floors up.
I don't know enough about VOCs in this context, however, I do know radon problems fairly well and with radon gases released by radioactive decay underground find their way into peoples' basements.
From there, they don't stay in basements. If they did, the risk to humans would be more mild. Instead, the radon gases migrate upward in the building towards the attic exposing everyone in the living quarters along the way.
Attic design is critical to how the radon flows in a house. You could actually increase the amount of radon that flows into a house by having too much attic ventilation along the roof peak. The ideal way to minimize radon involves low-roofline ventilation of the attic combined with trying to seal the basement floor of cracks/holes/etc.
*If* VOCs travel like radon, it would actually make sense that the higher floors will be more affected.
We don't know enough to do a thorough, adequate analysis - for example, we don't know what or how the ventilation system is setup, where it's pulling air from, etc.
Another thing that came to mind: there is a known effect with sound waves - where multiple different sources of sound may not be a problem source themselves (e.g. low level rumbling fans from large buildings) - but then where those sound waves intersect can cause a problem point that impacts biological life; it can be a single source of industrial noise pollution, multiple cases of whole towns getting sick because of it being traced back to the frequencies/vibrations given off by large fans - but what if some noises happen to triangulate to be a problem in your specific unit? It's not impossible.
We're talking about an old farm with slightly above threshold levels of pesticides. At least that's what I could tell by reading the environmental report. It just strains credulity that it could be off-gassing that much.
From 1974-1985, Synertek, Inc., leased the area directly uphill from where the Santa Clara Square Apartments currently stand. Synertek manufactured semiconductors, crucial to the production of microchips for computers and other technologies. The manufacturing involved highly toxic chemicals, and several tanks stored underground on site leaked VOCs into the groundwater, contaminating the soil around the area. In 1987, the area was deemed a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency. In spite of this, or the VOCs known to be on site of the SCSA property, the DTSC did not make VOCs a part of their remediation plan for the apartments
When my grandmother visits a therapist, they usually try to give her medication if not report her to ER because of her off-the-scale blood pressure. She then explains that her BP is always like this when she visits a therapist, and the only thing to do is to leave the office. 10 bpm drop may be something or nothing.
Lets call a spade a spade shall we? This is a forum with self professed reasonable people. The reaction could be anything from tile cleaner to toilet cleaner or an allergic reaction to bread.
Or, honestly, simple anxiety. I went through a year of severe anxiety where I honestly thought I was suffering extreme cardiac and maybe neurological symptoms. It turned out to be all psychosomatic. There are so many markers of similarity between this article and my experience. "Fainting spells, chest pain, numbness" were all part of it, and more.
How do you know this was the only person? Others might have complaint to the property management company. Besides that, not everyone thinks that its their own home who makes them sick and they will blame something else. Its possible that a specific area hasn’t been cleaned properly so only a few apartments will be affacted and not all 1800.
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.
Yes. I know I'm personally extremely sensitive to VOC's in a way most other people aren't, so I don't doubt her medical symptoms at all.
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.
> In this case, the apartment complex appears to have over 1,800 units, which makes it surprising that only a single person is experiencing such dramatic effects.
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.
Also the gp has no proof or basis for this statement other than:
a) they read a story about 1 persons experience
b) the site has 1800 units
The gp has to prove a counter factual now: no one else had symptoms.
They can’t do that. Do you know the history of all the move outs of that complex? Do you doubt the owner is highly litigious?
In addition, some people are just more sensitive. They act like a form of early warning system. Does living there give you an increased 10% of lifetime cancer? It would be hard to prove.
And a final note: doesn’t everyone deserve a safe place to live that isn’t poisoning them? The sheer amount of naysaying in these comments is disappointing and reveals a profound lack of understanding of the science and a severely over constrained mindset: if it cannot be proven immediately by an individual without a budget and no resources, then it cannot be true.
To be fair its nonsense rhetoric to ask someone to prove the non-existence of something you aren't able to measure (given we can't just barge into people homes and start probing them). But there is a likelihood that other people who have symptoms will now come forward seeing this, so the people of Santa Clara Square still might have more for us. I would be surprised it doctors can't detect if the patient has been poisoned.
The article mentions that there is a 500 gallon tank of some toxic material buried at a unknown location in the property. 500 gallons is very small -- 66 cubic feet, which is about 4 ft by 4 ft by 4 ft.
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.
The site she’s referring to is almost 100 acres and the apartment in question is on the third floor. It’s exceedingly unlikely that a tank is located precisely in a way to leak into a single 3rd floor apartment.
> The Santa Clara Square project encompasses approximately 93 acres
The challenge with these stories is that they rely on vague details to create an appearance of plausibility. The fact that a tank containing some substance exists somewhere in a 93-acre property would not normally be credible cause to believe that someone’s symptoms in a 3rd story apartment are the result of the soil.
Again, to emphasize: I am not doubting that this person is suffering real symptoms. I think it’s a mistake to focus on the soil or mysterious tanks in unknown location as the cause to the exclusion of other possible causes.
I haven't seen this particular complex, but a lot of new apartment construction in the area has a basement parking garage. You'd think it would have enough ventilation and have enough natural circulation that this would be even more unlikely. Unless they shut of the fan because no one was leaving during covid.
I lived in an apartment two floors above a pool and barbecue area for a year. I regularly had severe air quality issues that did not affect the floors below me. I could watch the smoke from the barbecue grills rise up to my level, then travel horizontally across and into my poorly sealed windows due to persistent local air currents.
I moved to another apartment building for the two years after that, and continued to have measurable AQ issues because the dryer, bathroom, and kitchen vents were flowing in reverse due to a poor building ventilation design that used a single central vent shaft and didn't adequately account for wind or the height of the building. I was on a side and floor of the building that had negative relative pressure much of the time.
Air isn't a perfectly homogenized uniform fluid -- there are very localized effects, and because it's often invisible, those local effects are often dismissed.
IMO the only sane and responsible way to develop apartments in a challenging environment (by a highway, by a fire or bbq environment, in an area where weed is legal, or on a toxic site) is for every single unit to have its own air handling system to maintain air quality and positive pressure in that individual unit.
> More commonly, typical patients prefer not to be photographed with medical equipment or in medical facilities
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?
The photo clearly doesn't provide any real evidence for her story, but it's also reckless speculation to say that "real patients" tend to not take photos with medical equipment. People take photos of everything these days. For a more extreme example of something you would expect people to not photograph - just think about how many people post photos of illegal activity on their social media profiles.
The challenge with a lot of these scenarios is it could be real (as in a theoretical normal person would have similar or the exact same issues), it could be psychosomatic, it could be someone pointing the finger at someone with deep pockets for a very real, but actually unrelated issue - not out of malice, but even because they believe it's true and no one has any evidence to the contrary. It can also be someone looking for a payday. Rarer, but it happens.
From her story, she was already under very heavy strain before even moving in (full time program manager job which isn't something to sneeze at, and taking what sounds like a full time legal course at the same time), while moving into a new (and presumably expensive) apartment in what could be a new area. All this, presumably (based on references to '7 months' and 'September 2020 when I finally figured out what was going on', during a historic pandemic with massive, stressful shifts in work and school environments, availability of outlets/breakage in coping mechanisms, etc.
Throw in perhaps an unwillingness of a landlord to release someone from a lease (as the local high end single occupancy rental market has crashed > 40% during this time), nasty nasty air pollution for months (the fires definitely impacted me and my family on top of COVID related impacts during this time - literally months of unhealthy air, orange skies, my cousins house burned down in the santa cruz mountains and many areas I've loved to visit in the past burnt down - it was terrible for mental health), everyone in the medical community confused and scrambled - almost everyone has been going nuts, in many different ways, and the stress has often been incredible.
The whole south bay and peninsula is dotted with superfund sites, and she makes numerous references to public interest advocacy, so I'm sure she is aware of history the issues in the area and with legal training wouldn't lack the tools to dig.
If you move to a new place (very stressful) in the middle of all this, and get worse - it's also hard to look at 'non-negotiable' things like work or school as contributing, because, well, you handled them before and you can't stop now right?
If you run across something else that could be causing it, why not pursue it? Especially if they're a big corp or billionaire with deep pockets? Worst case they let you out of your overly expensive lease (now that the market collapsed) to get you off their back, best case you get a decent settlement to compensate you for the damage they caused (since you can't find anything else doing it).
One of the big challenges here in the bay area is everyone is always trigger happy legally for environmental issues, and most of this stuff is almost impossible to DISPROVE.
The science is really not great - we know some chemicals cause predictable things like cancers in certain situations - but there are a LOT of different chemicals, in a lot of different environments/states of weathering, in a lot of different types of exposure settings (residential with windows open a lot, residential with windows closed a lot, ground floor, top floor, near a vent, not near a vent, industrial, etc). And that isn't even counting all the different glues, adhesives, plastics, etc. in typical new construction. You can't run a good double blind study on this stuff (too many variables, ethical issues in many cases), animal models suck, chemical composition is sometimes not well documented or changed random over time, you name it.
Ideally we'd all live in untouched pastoral glades far from any industry, but that just isn't how the world works. People need to live near their jobs for efficiency reasons, jobs tend to be concentrated near businesses (or have been historically), businesses often make things, making things can be a messy and polluting business.
I live in a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. We're are downwind from a compost facility sometimes. The smell is horrible k if you grew up using outhouses, it's the smell after a weekend when the extended family visits). Very intense some days. However, it is just "a bad smell".
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.
Manure and organic waste excrete hydrogen sulfide while they are being digested. The rotten egg smell you speak of is the hydrogen sulfide and it is toxic. And one of the major symptoms of H2S poisoning is migraines, coughing, shortness of breath.
So your neighbors were completely inline with feeling the way the do.
BTW, I went to school next to a mushroom farm. A big warehouse with giant mounds of manure. And yeah we felt all of that too during the warmest times of the school year. The school administrator and most parents tried to convince the students it was all in their head.
I don't find the idea that cloth could be smelly from smelly air crazy. When you have cloth in smelly air, in fact they do smell after. Likewise, migraines does not sound like crazy symptoms, whether they are ultimately tied to compost. Migraines are something that happen when you don't breath well.
I've never noticed our clothes smelling from the dryer. No one dries on the line here because of all the silt in the air. I am reconsidering my position on the headaches based on another comment. I might be in the wrong there.
> "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)."
so kinda like the fervent supporters (most news outlets included) of lockdowns, pervasive mask-wearing, and long-covid (as if post-infection complications are something new and unique)? or the opposite faction defiantly anti-mask and anti-vaccine?
people exaggerate and then fall into a hole of argumentative sunk cost, where they then view their own reputation being on the line, so they double-down rather than back down. in the moment, we don't realize that it's actually not that costly to concede to exaggeration, that a matter of degree almost never bolsters an argument.
the curious part is not that, but that we've yet to solve this collecctive dilemma (reason vs. dignity) that's seemingly been with us since the dawn of time. in a private conversation, it's possible to recognize the dilemma and redirect the conversation to a more productive line of reasoning by just asking questions and unraveling contradictions with the respondent. 'giving face' is somewhat related, but isn't necessarily concerned with veracity and reason, only dignity, especially for the (perceived) higher class person. i've always liked the 'wisdom of crowds' concept because it could be exactly this collective dignity-preserving redirection, but it defies power and expertise, so doesn't get enough merit and employment.
The first advice you’ll get from most people is to document everything.
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.
> Her taking a photo wearing medical equipment is extremely important
Why is a photo of her wearing medical equipment extremely important? All the photo is documenting is that she wore medical equipment for some reason at some point in her life.
She has some medical problems. She discovered environmental problems with the building or whole property. Most probably they are not related - but there is this disturbing thing that the environmental problems would never be fixed if they cause only very low-grade harm.
> Their symptoms are certainly very real in that they are suffering, but the selfie of the person wearing medical equipment in front of a mirror combined with measurements from consumer devices as evidence should be approached with caution.
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.
Under that theory, why would she feel better after moving out of the apartment? An why would her vitals stabilize back to normal? (assuming she brought her arm with her)
Got an addition right before it all happened and finally settled down? Quit doing something that reliably bumped her arm?
Or, perhaps, eating at different restaurants once she moved? Perhaps something disturbing her sleep? Is she walking more or less? Is she walking through somewhere that uses pesticides or weed killer? Is the local grass watered with grey water that didn't get treated well enough?
If the cleaning crew bumps my work monitor an inch or two and I don't notice, I'll wind up with neck and back aches.
Commoner and closer things are more likely the explanation for something acute.
"Toxic waste" tends to be the culprit when you have weird disease clusters that are more chronic and take a long time to develop. "Toxic waste" that causes acute symptoms tends to be really obvious in multiple people.
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.
Still could be someone before, but if not then construction itself could be the issue.
That said, I smell my downstairs neighbor smoking even with doors and windows closed because we share a ventilation system (fans in bathrooms, for example). So it could be a neighbor!
Also worth noting is that several large tech companies are on <100 feet away from her apartment, literally across the street.
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.
In many cases they do but neglect to adequately inform employees that may be potentially be affected. At the Google Quad campus in Mountain View there was an incident where some ventilation fans were accidentally turned off which caused employees to be exposed to TCE (affects embryo development so mainly concerning to pregnant employees) that is leeching up from the ground. I'm pretty sure that 99% of the people would not have been able to tell you it was a risk in working there.
Also in the area is the "MEW plume". When I asked realtors about it while looking for real estate in the area they all claimed to know nothing about it - despite being locals and there being land development rules requiring that top soil be carted away to be treated.
So many people/orgs are tacitly working together to ignore the problem since no one wants to be inconvenienced or left holding the bag.
Complaining about vague symptoms and then complaining about data collected with consumer devices is a little unfair IMO. We should be encouraging people with vague symptoms to collect more objective data!
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)
Some years back I signed a lease in a luxury apartment hi-rise in downtown Chicago. The complex had been an add-on to an existing shopping center and mall. Long story short, the apartment smelled like old grease and trash often, and I could never trace the exact source as it would come and go.
No matter how many air filtration units I installed, or odor absorbing devices, the odors would still collect and infiltrate my clothing and furniture. Again, it wasn't constant but regular enough for me not to stay there very often.
I ended up caulking the entire apartment with clear caulk and sealing any air gaps. Because the hi-rise was pressurized like most hi-rises, I concluded somehow this was drawing up smells from grease traps etc. Of course I could never prove it.
My conclusion is that most of these buildings are so cheaply and poorly made that I will never again rent a unit like this. Too bad I spent 30k on the lease and hardly ever stayed there. So the woman's experience seems pretty plausible to me.
> I ended up caulking the entire apartment with clear caulk and sealing any air gaps. Because the hi-rise was pressurized like most hi-rises, I concluded somehow this was drawing up smells from grease traps etc.
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’m surprised she didn’t try to escape from her apartment like you did. She mentions sleeping outside on an occasion, but that’s about it. I think I would have paid some money to go to a hotel, stay with a friend, grab an AirBnB someplace just to figure out if my symptoms went away. The things she was experiencing sounded just horrible.
The difficulty there is if you believe your home is making you sick, you’re quite likely to feel more at ease and sleep better in another place. Or you’re sleeping away from all your new furnishings and the building materials which are off-gassing.
So, you get a datapoint that’s better, but what do you do with it?
Most people here seem concerned about vocs. Plastics, carpets, sofas, paints, air fresheners and a ton of other typical household items produce them.
I feel like the author is really jumping the gun here in identifying the source of pollutants by not seeking to consider the fact that new apartments are loaded with freshly off-gassing materials.
The other thing that should have been mentioned is more about their vitals prior to moving in. How confident was she in her baseline because it could be a preexisting condition that became very exacerbated.
Edit: But that said, my opinion of the Irvine company is extremely low. I’d not be the least bit surprised if they willfully cut every corner they could. Either with remediation or materials in the apartment. And pollutants do pool overnight but near freeways they are typically the worst in the dawn hours. There would be less air exchange in the apartment, leading to a buildup from an external or internal source.
Typically you have doors and windows closed at night, so with reduced ventilation its typical for c02 or VOCs to spike. It must suck to live somewhere (LA?) where opening the windows doesn't help
Lease agreements can’t simply waive away criminal liability. You can’t commit crimes or fraud against someone just by getting them to sign a waiver.
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.
> Lease agreements can’t simply waive away criminal liability. You can’t commit crimes or fraud against someone just by getting them to sign a waiver.
I think it's specifically problematic that these terms are being put into all sorts of legal documents (lease agreements, employment agreements, etc.) as standard boilerplate.
What you stated is correct, but it almost doesn't matter when the terms end up achieving the goals of the more powerful party, which is to discourage litigation, even in cases where it might be warranted.
You shouldn't be allowed to pretend, in a legal document, that your counterparty isn't allowed to sue you for wrongdoing. That's basically fraud.
You are still on the back foot as a plaintiff facing this kind of clause, because before the lawsuit begins the defendent will move to force litigation, and you'll have to fight this battle (at $300/hour) before the lawsuit itself even gets started.
Yeah, so basically that sly clause in contract makes no difference, the problem is you have to go that path yourself, wasting your time, or pay the lawyer, wasting money upfront.
Pretty much how it works in any part of the world, unless you're jumping into train started by someone else
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.
> 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.
Was the writer actually tricked, as in did someone misrepresent the contents of the lease agreement?
I didn't notice an allegation along those lines in the article.
That could be fraud if the contract was miss-represented in some way, although some contracts say you are agreeing to only what is written and no verbal discussions are part of the agreement.
It then becomes a fairly important legal concept that when you sign an agreement, that you understand and knowingly enter into the terms outlined into that agreement.
As a way overly simplistic example, if I sell a widget for $100, some of that price might be to cover potential litigation and the like. However, if I find a customer who's willing to take the risk and agree to not sue me for some problem with the product, that agreement might be worth $75 to me. If all my competitors start selling competing widgets with a template that waives that right to litigate, I might have to follow along, because enough customers don't want to buy the $100 widgets and realize the price difference is a protection for them.
Consumers could presumably band together and elect lawmakers that pass a minimum standard that no one can enter into a contract that doesn't allow disputes to be resolved via the courts, but then you don't get to complain when widgets get more expensive, or that there are other terms in the contract that aren't agreeable.
If it wasn't a concept that when you enter into an agreement and sign those terms, that you actually understand and agree to those terms, I can't even predict what the chaos would look like.
If you buy a widget without guarantees you expect it to at worst not work, but if it actively sabotages the rest of the site, steals user login cookies, runs a crypto miner then it's a different thing altogether.
Similar a apartment might be faulty for all kind of things but if it is build on toxic wast, which on itself shouldn't have been legal without making sure the wast is contained, it is a different matter altogether.
Especially given that whoever know that there was toxic wast was actively endangering the health and potential live of tenants. Just consider your widget instead of just not working to arbitrary start playing flash lights in a way extremely likely to cause serve epileptic seizures...
EDIT: Or in other words, you might not guarantee the quality of a pice you sell, but this is a different matter altogether then trying to make people unable to sue you for things they rightfully can (like endangering health/live).
Seriously, I don’t see why this is legal. Sure, s/he should of read the lease carefully but sometimes landlord’s purposely stuff their lease agreements which makes it equivalent to online terms of service.
Read the reactions to many issues on this site. It tells the story.
People believe in their own exceptionalism and have a strange perspective on freedom. That’s the toolbox that companies use to divide and conquer. It was particularly hilarious back a few years ago when major tech companies were colluding to suppress salaries and blacklist employees through “no poaching” agreements.
The reaction to this sort of complaint is “just move somewhere else” or “that may be a problem for some ditz like you, but I am a 10x genius”.
What makes you think this is something that criminal law would address? The vast vast majority of these sorts of issues with corporations are handled via civil suits. That even includes wage theft, which is the largest category of theft several times over. Congress and state legislatures have by and large decided (so far) not to criminalize corporate wrongdoing unless it impacts shareholders.
Agreed. Why is it even possible to get people to waive away their rights via fine print? These clauses are a standard feature of most if not all contracts these days. They should be illegal.
I'm curious at what the VOCs were that were being measured by the home devices.
Indoor VOCs can be caused by numerous common sources. Some of these would be common in a new development:
- Paints/Coatings
- Flooring
- Furniture
- Cleaners & Disinfectants
Even though she states "I also noticed the tVOCs seemed to rise and fall at different times of the day when I was having the worst symptoms", this can be affected by things such as the rise and fall of the temperature in the indoor space, or even whether something as seemingly benign as candles are lit.
I have no say in this either way, as it would require testing of other similar units and finding out if there are any specific VOC sources in her individual unit (did a room get painted recently)?
When dealing with indoor VOC levels, it can get tricky.
This is a great point, I've heard of people purchasing a piece of furniture, getting wicked allergy symptoms/irriated airways, buying one of these tVOC meters, and finding out it's their chair/couch/etc.
She got sick when she moved in? What new furniture did she buy?
Yeah, I bought a tempurpedic mattress once and the off-gassing (which the salesman insisted wouldn't happen) obliterated my lungs for like a week. Could barely talk, had to sleep on the floor downstairs and leave the bedroom windows open the whole time to air it out.
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.
Molds emit VOCs which is also a possibility in some places. You might not be exposed to the spores directly, but the gases emitted by the growth travels through.
There are a lot of armchair scientists touting their ill-informed theories, such as “she lives on the 3rd floor” and “she just passes a lot of gas”.
Building are complex structures with numerous pathways and extensive air flow channels that harmful chemicals could pass through or get blown.
Often, airflow equipment is in the basement or first floor, blowing air throughout a building.
The best way to handle this is to 1) stop the pseudo-scientific babble, and 2) perform scientific measurements of the air quality by qualified professionals. From the article, it looks like she is doing her best to quantify her health issues and to get scientific help. What’s wrong with that?
There have absolutely been cases where well-meaning people on the internet have caused harm by latching on to a pseudo-scientific explanation for an unexplained illness. I’m thinking of anti-vaxxers, chronic lyme disease, etc.
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.
> The completion report said, “While not an environmental remedy, because there are no significant risks, a VIMS consisting of a vapor barrier and a sub-slab venting system has been designed and installed.” Installing these apparently could cost millions of dollars. It’s curious to me that Roux would plan to build four VIMS, or even build one, if they really thought VOCs were not an issue.
That sounds awfully like the way that ordinary houses are constructed, especially anywhere with (naturally occurring!) radium in or under the soil. When one builds a house with a slab foundation, one first builds a capillary break (a bunch of rocks with no fines, perhaps — this is an air-permeable layer), then applies a vapor barrier (polyethylene sheets), then pours the slab directly on the vapor barrier. The only thing special about sub slab venting is a pipe from the capillary break to the roof that may or may not be fan assisted. The goal isn’t so much to remove gas from under the slab as to reduce the pressure under the slab below the pressure above the slab such that gas doesn’t intrude.
All of this except the pipe is done regardless of soil gas concerns — water vapor coming through the slab destroys floor coverings.
I know basically nothing about commercial construction, and I could easily believe that vapor barriers are optional under parking lots.
Given that the VOCs in question are easily measurable in real time with a cheap sensor, it could be interesting to measure the VOCs at the lowest level of the parking lot over time. Some parking lots have CO (or CO2?) sensors that control exhaust fans. If there is less car activity at 3am, the fans could turn off, and that could have any number of effects.
(Also, the author doesn’t seem to have tried to distinguish between gasses coming from the building and gasses coming from under or outside the building. There is no actual evidence I saw in the article that the problem is a problem with the site. Heck, a building air intake being contaminated by gasses from the parking lot could introduce a fair amount of CO and NOx even if the levels were too low to set off a CO alarm. Builders mess up the airflow in buildings all the time.
Sadly, NOx sensors do not appear to be available at comparable prices to tVOC and CO sensors.
Compelling article. Definitely raises real problems deserving of scrutiny; technical, legal, and administrative. I was a little bothered that this is just a direct reprinting of a single (admittedly deep and well-rounded) anecdotal experience, with no input from subject matter experts or independent attempts to contact other tenants.
I sent the article to a friend who’s a hydrogeologist and environmental remediation consultant. Basically, the guy that cleanup companies send to assess these sites, take samples, and make remediation plans. His hot take:
“Based on the info in the article alone I’d be very surprised if soil or groundwater VOCs were getting into her unit in concentrations high enough to cause acute health effects. Sounds like there’s a vapor venting system installed which in my experience alleviates all indoor air concerns. It could be that it exhausts near her window or something and concentrates in her apartment, but that would be a design/architectural issue more than an environmental issue per se. My initial suspicion would be that she bought cheap furniture or there’s cheap carpets or something that are offgassing VOCs.”
A quick read from a single expert isn’t enough to draw conclusions, but I do wish the paper had bothered to seek that kind of input before publishing.
Whatever the cause of this person’s symptoms may be, inadequate environmental remediation is a very real problem that deserves our concern. I wish the comments in this thread focused more on that. Instead the primary debate is whether a single person with apparently serious symptoms but no expertise, resources, or authority made the right technical call after being ignored by the people with all the expertise, resources, and authority. IMO that is the real story here: a person bought (a) furnishing for (b) a condo on a plot of (c) remediated land, experienced a health crisis, and the relevant parties (that she’s paying rent and taxes to!) all seem to have ghosted her instead of investigating which of those 3 things was the problem. After an experience like that, how could you blame her for doing her best to collect evidence and draw her own conclusions?
Even if the cause she identified is wrong, it’s not imagined. This isn’t “cancer from cell towers” or “migraines from wind turbines”. You just won’t read an article from the victims of industrial pollution in Bayview/Hunter’s Point.
She mentions her vitals returned to normal after moving away, and presumably she took her furniture when she moved, so it seems unlikely it’s caused by that.
When you’re sick, a lot of times your home is your safe place. You go home and crawl in bed and try to feel better. Imagine your safe place to feel better is causing you to become even sicker.
This story is very plausible. Just look at the Shipyard condos in San Francisco. They had a cleanup, and apparently some parts of cleanup were fraudulent. So residents are suing.
As a reminder to SFbay folks, if you’re near a local waterway and you smell a strong smell of vanilla cupcakes, you might be breathing an industrial toxin that leached from a local superfund site. (Don’t panic, it won’t kill you quickly!) It’s unfortunate that her VOCs were odorless because if they were cupcake-odored there wouldn’t have been any argument.
> one of my neighbors at the same complex complained about blue tap water and paid for a private lab test showing “very high” levels of lead, copper and other contaminants in the water.
That's weird, though "copper" could just be from the pipes, and it's probably unrelated to VOCs. The complex should be on city water, and all the pipes are new.
Also copper is an essential trace element and the acceptable amount of copper in drinking water is quite high, 1.3 ppm. If that were the actual concentration of copper in this apartment's tap water, the pipes will be corroded through in no time. Anyway if a lab test shows more than 1.3 ppm of copper in drinking water then a tenant should, immediately, move to a hotel, stop paying the rent, and file a legal claim for loss of enjoyment plus the cost of temporary accommodation, which would be a slam-dunk of a suit.
I’m interested in the 3:00am spike shown on the monitors and her physical response. Could the building’s HVAC be programmed to turn on (or off) at that time?
I never would of though to check something like this. Interestingly, the EPA has a GIS API so I see a couple people make maps on ARCGIS. Definitely making something for my house purchase.
Kind of interesting how similar this is to other serious problems with vinyl chloride in Silicon Valley. Also kind of interesting that so many sofa based contamination engineers here didn't bother to investigate any of that. HN has a really serious problem with people who have a weak grasp of complex subjects carrying on like what they say relates to anything.
There is an interesting case in Irvine, CA. There's an Asphalt plant which has been operating since 1993. (All American Asphalt company). Few years ago, the City of Irvine approved residential within 1-2 miles of this plant. The area is called Orchard Hills, houses from 1-3M USD. There is an ongoing investigation from UCI, City of Irvine, residents and government air quality control agency as many people reports strong asphalt smell and high VoC. Worth following https://www.cityofirvine.org/community-development/all-ameri...
Isn't this though the stereotypical NIMBY nonsense of people knowingly moving into area with existing industry or agricultural, then complaining about smells, etc? Or worse, bulldozing bare land for their housing subdivisions, then complaining about the "environment.
Are there good open-source components for air quality monitoring, e.g multiple sensors that work with a common software platform, for continuous data collection and analysis? Ideally something that works with low-cost boards like ESP32.
Not that I'm aware of, but it's actually pretty easy to build one from off the shelf parts (ESP8266, Plantower PMSA003, Sensirion SHT31, Sensirion SGP30, Senseair S8), which was my pet project during the pandemic. Basic soldering skills required, but otherwise nothing really complicated about it.
I can write something about it if there's any interest.
The linked DIY instructions give you a basic board with PM 2.5 particles, temp, humidity, and CO2. It is built on a Wemos D1 mini.
The founder (Achim) is very helpful.
If you wanted to use these plans to get started (including the software to power the Wemos), then buy whatever additional sensors you might like to add, it should be fairly simple.
The BOM is similar but it's not very compact. I have yet to 3D print a case for mine and get the PCB manufactured, but the dimensions for it are roughly 1"x1"x2" assembled, when not on a breadboard.
All you internet trolls that have nothing to do to criticize this article need a wake up call. Did you not read anything about how Irvine Co seemed super sketch about the whole thing, refused to investigate, and made retaliatory threats?! Of course no one else would push this through! In my opinion, this girl is a complete badass fighting for answers and instead of criticizing her we ought to share this information so it can be properly investigated. For all of you writing these idiot comments, just think about if you were in her shoes. Instead of victim blaming, how about we get alongside her and try to find answers.
I don't see it mentioned here, but I wonder if the trees around the apartment are transpiring the vocs that are absorbed from the (potentially) contaminated water. That would be a way these vocs reach her 3rd floor apt, and also may be why her particular apartment is affected more than others.in the building (proximity to a particular tree?)
I myself bought an air quality monitor, and am happy I did (uHoo). I have several gas appliances and was concerned about NOx and other possible gases. It turns out everything is about normal, except that CO2 levels in the basement tend to get elevated. I had no idea that this was something that happened. I now make sure to try and air it out down there once in a bit and take breaks more often, since that is where my office is set up.
I bought a CO2 meter for work, with the intention of taking it into (small) conference rooms once in a while to see what happened to the CO2 there.
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.
How reliable are those devices? Last I looked only the professional ones ($150+) could guarantee independently verified results. Consumer stuff often depended upon calibration and might vary wildly even between two different devices by the same manufacturer.
The one I have is from https://getuhoo.com/home and was around $300. For CO2, it looks like resolution is 1 ppm with a tolerance of ±50 ppm or ±3% of reading (higher of the two).
I can't speak to how well it is calibrated since you would need other devices to compare with.
This echoes some vibes of Neal Stephenson's Zodiac. Replace Boston with The Bay, PCBs with VOCs, and fast-forward some 30 years, and there you have it. If only we could learn from past mistakes...
There needs to be a "ZAGAT's" for toxicity (in commercial and residential real estate). So at least there can be something owned and managed by the public, and not having to rely on these agencies, many of whom need to balance "economic freedom / business friendliness" with the facts.
Such a site would need to be either hosted offshore, or have deep pockets to protect against defamation lawsuits and other litigation. It would also need to have a great process for removing false positives and false negatives. What process would that be, though? It would have to involve actual testing by trusted agencies, I think.
I do a bit of side work as an environmental law journalist primarily covering Superfund cases. A lot of this data is publicly available from the EPA, especially with respect to Superfund sites. Unfortunately the data is not available in an easily digestible form. It’s tucked away in long-winded PDF reports that are unique to each site so the data collected and the way it’s presented isn’t uniform. But I do think the data is, for the most part, robust, reliable, and available if someone made the effort to devise a way to scrape and parse it.
> these agencies, many of whom need to balance "economic freedom / business friendliness" with the facts.
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.
There's several available for around $100 on Amazon. I have one, it is hard to know how accurate/complete it is with respect to VOC detection, I mainly use mine for PM10 detection during fire season, and it seems reasonably accurate in that it agrees with the state's readings
hmm I don't know how this one works, but I'd be very wary of devices that are not equipped by a sensor thats bulging out of the device or one with a fan moving the air into the sensor.
The term is “medical gaslighting” and seems to disproportionately affect women. It comes up with things like ‘chronic fatigue’ diagnosis and has to do with women’s symptoms and experiences being dismissed.
It's a dual problem IMO- women are dismissed due to unconscious bias sometimes I'm sure, but I also suspect there are medical issues out there that are much more common in women that have been so under-researched that we know basically nothing about them. Which does make it a hard problem for front line doctors.
Yes, it's statistically true that women are questioned more often than men about (among other things) whether their symptoms are "real", are psychosomatic, are caused by the thing they think they're caused by, etc. It's totally appropriate to point that out, as gdubs did, and to remind people that unconscious bias is a thing.
It's another thing to just tell someone they've questioned a woman in a way they wouldn't have questioned a man, without knowing anything more about them. It's obviously incorrect that men are never questioned in the same fashion or that this line of questioning is always inappropriate. It's generally unknowable what would have happened in the same situation with reversed genders. What do you think is gained by this kind of specific, confident accusation? Do you think they're going to say "oh, I thought about this, and you're right, I was being sexist, thanks, all better now?" No! Everyone digs into their positions, flamewars erupt, reputations are damaged, and/or people think (correctly, IMHO) that accusations of sexism are often false, etc. And I don't think you're following the HN guidelines of assuming good faith.
Personally, I have no idea if the author's symptoms are caused by the environmental conditions at the building site. The evidence presented isn't compelling. She has made a compelling case though that gathering this evidence is hard, if not impossible, due to broken regulatory structures.
This is a forum with a bunch of (pseudo) technophiles. I'd expect them to be more, rather than less, inclined to believe someone who got sensors and other data together. The expressed skepticism isn't gender motivated.
At the time you posted this, two comments questioned the validity of the OP's experience, both downvoted to near-invisible with multiple replies denouncing them
Good luck. The “owner” of any modern development probably put 5-10% down, and has a syndicate of LLCs and LPs fronting money in exchange for tax write offs. You’ll only find someone willing to admit to ownership when the property is 15-20 years old.
Cities like NYC didn’t adopt strict rent control and regulation back the the days before home ownership became a thing for the middle class because they were a bunch of commies. The incentives for landlords always lead to them being assholes as they grow, going back millennia.
What if the owner is not a billionaire? You certainly don’t need to be one to own an apartment building, you probably don’t even need to be a multimillionaire, as you can finance the project on loans.
Additionally, the building is probably owned by an LLC, so even if the owner of the LLC is a billionaire, you can’t fine him personally, and his billions are irrelevant.
You need to have pretty significant assets to get a foot in the door to large buildings from what I've read these buildings are rarely the only collateral on the loan.
Assuming he got rich by building this company, his billions in wealth would be mostly in the form of his ownership of the company. So not entirely irrelevant.
I'm glad she found relief, but it's odd that there wasn't illness in many more people. The symptoms are very extreme... then I caught the clue: "I work full time as a program manager while attending law school to become a public interest attorney."
A new Erin Brockovich, it seems. I can't help but recall axiom that if your focus is looking for trouble, you're certain to find it.
The story would have more credibility if there were more illnesses, then it wouldn't smack of resume padding.
It is odd that more people didn't have symptoms, but given that the symptoms preceded discovering that her apartment was next to the toxic waste it's more likely than not that this is legitimate.
Having lived in a new apartment building, the smell was very strong even without a superfund underneath. What are the odds every new apartment tenant is being poisoned, but most don't have asthma or other sensitivities to make it obvious and are training in a profession that teaches them to look for it?
It's possible that every tenant is being poisoned (and I'd suggest that this is not good either). There's some evidence that the new car smell isn't good, and the articles reference that problem being with VOCs (link to study https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...).
I don't think people are doubting that she has symptoms, just that they may be exacerbated by anxiety. Anxiety that she has learned she lives near toxic waste and has a gadget she bought on the internet that shows big numbers.
“This apartment complex had no physical or written appearance of danger from chemicals, other than a brief and vague note about the presence of “agricultural chemicals” buried towards the end of the “Resident Handbook.”
Are you serious?! This is what you got out of that entire article? Wow. So in order for her story to be credible she has to develop what, cancer? Gosh you people are ridiculous. God forgot anything like this happens to you. Pretty sure Irvine Co. scared away any other complainants, but who cares about that, right? We’re just going to let large companies block necessary investigations and victim blame. You make absolutely no sense. How about we push for an investigation?
Occam's razor would lead to this summary: person finds out that the apartment was built on a former toxic waste site, gives themselves a panic attack.
Of course, there is always the possibility that her unit was somehow special, but it's incredibly unlikely. Statements like "how would they know I was looking into it" and " and "why would they offer me to break the lease with no penalty" further strengthen the mental health angle.
This isn't to make fun or diminish the author's concerns. It's just that one root cause is much much more likely and really should be investigated first. I hope she has someone caring in her life to look into that angle.
Edit: happy to burn some karma on this in case this helps someone get help for a loved one. Mental health issues are excruciatingly hard to deal with and I have first hand experience. It sucks when you realize that to help someone you have to go against their wishes.
This one seems pretty clear cut. The landlord wishing that she would go away is a conspiracy? She talked about this for weeks and is surprised someone thought she may have looked at the environmental reports? And lastly, everyone in the neighboring units is totally fine.
And by the way, I am not saying "she is crazy". I am saying "look into both possibilities". I am happy to see that the comment at the top with the most votes is saying the exact same thing.
The problem is that Occam’s Razor will always point to panic attacks in cases where the underlying issue doesn’t immediately show up on imaging/blood work. In this case, though, her neighbor allegedly found lead in the water.
Which is likely unrelated. Lead in the tap water comes from older buildings with inappropriate plumbing materials [0] or potentially from a colossal screw up with modern construction. Or maybe from a really horrible water utility, but SF does not have that problem. It has nothing to do with contamination of the site.
I think lots of houses in Europe have lead in the tap water though... Because they are old and changing the pipes in the building costs a lot.
I took a measurement in a downtown Budapest flat we rented and it came back 10x the limit. The water had no odor, discolor or taste.
She also had asthma, so if that unrecovered tank of chemicals was just affecting her unit, and no one else in that unit had asthma, they might not have sufficiently severe symptoms to notice. It seems quite possible.
Occam's Razor says she had magical pre-cognitive powers that allowed her to get hysterical before she took the readings. Because woe betide we not dismiss her.
Correction: we have her claim that she got medical treatment, a graph she made, and a selfie with some medical equipment. We don't have independent proof of anything. And yes, I did read the article. If this paper trail ever surfaces I'll happily take back everything I said.
You've changed your claim from “she's delusional” to “she's deceiving us”. The latter claim is much more credible… but quite a lot of the things she wrote are independently verifiable, and I haven't seen anyone saying “that's not true!”, so…
I believe defamation, or "communicating false statements about a person that injure their reputation" doesn't apply either.
I believe your criticism is describing that the poster didn't reaffirm/"yes, and" the author, but rather, posited an alternative explanation.
I would call this "tone deaf" if it was a person they had a personal relationship with, "gaslighting" if it occurred repeatedly and they were lying in service of attempting to manipulate the author, and dead serious, not being sarcastic, the worst I could call it in this situation is "disagreeing".[1]
I'm really struggling to come up with something that satisfies the requirement that we describe the person you originally replied to negatively, since neither psychological manipulation of the individual or lying are involved. Being primed to describe this situation as either of those might be throwing me off, I'm curious if you have a lengthier explanation that can give us some color as to what part of the comment you're trying to describe
[1] Personally, I wouldn't call it disagreeing, because I got the sense from the article that the author believes they've done all they can with off-the-shelf tools and a laymen's analysis of planning documents, and they wrote up the post _specifically_ because they needed more help, hopefully from institutions, to find the explanation
Wouldn't say there's plenty, and for sure accusing the poster of "pure gaslighting" is way overboard: VOCs are a broad category, off the shelf monitoring equipment, and surveying the environmental remidiation plan, do not a full tale make. Hence, why OP wrote the post...they still don't have answers or help...
You’re taking all the evidence that she has gathered, saying it means nothing and are instead blaming the victim...my bad, last time I checked, that was gaslighting.
I didn't say anything like this or about the article at all. I was just commenting that the term "gaslighting" has a specific definition and the term is being misused.
Unfortunately, doubting these people’s stories is taboo online so I’m going to tread carefully. However, when only 1 unit out of 1800 apartments (presumably 2000-3000 total residents considering multi-bedroom units) is experiencing severe and dramatic symptoms, my first guess would not be the soil under the foundation. I would be looking for building materials or chemical spills in that specific apartment unit.
Also, I’m not suggesting that we discount this person’s story. Their symptoms are certainly very real in that they are suffering, but the selfie of the person wearing medical equipment in front of a mirror combined with measurements from consumer devices as evidence should be approached with caution. There is a relatively new phenomenon casually known as Munchausen by Internet where some patients are drawn to the increasing attention they can garner by sharing, and unfortunately exaggerating, their stories on the internet. These patients often post selfies of themselves wearing medical equipment, in doctor’s offices, or in hospital beds. More commonly, typical patients prefer not to be photographed with medical equipment or in medical facilities. Again, I’m not suggesting we disbelieve this person, but it’s important that we consider the bigger picture (1800 unit apartment complex, apparently only one case of severe symptoms?) before accepting a single person’s analysis of what is causing her issues.
Mistaken “sick building syndrome” diagnoses can actually be very detrimental to patients who mistake other illnesses as being caused by their buildings, as they hyperfocus on their presumed explanation to the exclusion of following more typical diagnostic work ups that would help them eliminate more common explanations for those symptoms.