Comparison of PERSONAL VOC EXPOSURES OF MULTIPLE CHEMICAL SENSITIVITY PATIENTS AND NON-PATIENTS

摘要

The number of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) patients is rapidly increasing in US, EU and Japan, because of exposures to volatile organic chemicals in indoor environments. To identify the responsible chemicals of the hypersensitive symptoms, we applied passive and active sampling methods to 22 MCS patients. Besides the personal exposure levels of 76 non-MCS persons were measured. The mean +-SD of formaldehyde weekly exposure levels of non-MCS persons were 22.3 +- 11.7 ppb and that of all MCS patients were 16.4 +- 12.2 ppb. The weekly exposure levels of the responsible chemicals of each MCS patient were lower than the median of the weekly exposure levels of non-MCS persons. This indicated that MCS patients chose places where chemical levels were relatively low. According to the exposure levels that induced hypersensitive reactions, the patient's symptoms are possible to be induced in general places around us.