Sick of it All

People with "Multiple Chemical sensitivity" are definitely suffering. The question is, why?

Michael Fumento from the June 1996 issue

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In a nice twist, the Environmental Protection Agency--whose noncommittal position on MCS has allowed backers to claim the agency is on their side--was sued in 1990 by employees at its Washington, D.C., headquarters who claimed that their new building had g iven them MCS. In 1993, the jury awarded five employees a total of about $1 million, but the D.C. Superior Court later threw out the verdict and granted a judgment in favor of the EPA. The court essentially said the whole thing was quite silly, that the plaintiffs hadn't proven their case or established damages and seemed to be remarkably healthy for people claiming to be so sick. Some of the plaintiffs had even requested damages for emotional harm, meaning they felt they should receive money even without showing that anything was physically wrong with them. The court said no to that, too.

Potential deep pockets abound, says Bonnie Semilof, an attorney with Spriggs and Hollingsworth in Washington, D.C., who often litigates MCS cases for defendants. "Manufacturers and applicators of a variety of substances found at home and workplace" are vulnerable, she says, as are "makers of carpeting, pesticides, formaldehyde, etc." Some MCS plaintiffs have received millions of dollars in dam age awards. In 1985, based on the testimony of two clinical ecologists, a jury awarded $49.2 million in compensatory and punitive damages to 32 people who lived near a chemical plant in Sedalia, Missouri. "Even though the science behind them hasn't been es tablished, you can't disprove it, either," Semilof says. "Anyone who tells you to laugh at these claims and dismiss them is full of it. From a legal and medical point of view, it needs to be taken quite seriously."

MCS may soon become fodder for "public interest" suits. Julia Kendall of the Chemical Injury Litigation Project told the Cato Institute's James Bovard, "No one should be wearing perfume to the theater. Why should we have brain damage because people are wea ring toxic chemicals?" Her agenda? "Basically, we want to destroy the fragrance industry." Targets include clothing softeners, scented deodorants, aftershaves, and hair sprays.

The nocebo effect can be accompanied by what is called "secondary gain." If a person thinks there is something to gain by remaining ill, that belief may help perpetuate symptoms. Sometimes the reward is just sympathy. Other times it's relief from a disagre eable job. And sometimes it's big bucks, which is where the lawyers come in. Says New York University psychiatrist Herbe rt Spiegel, an authority on secondary gain, "All day long we get various sensations we can't account for. If we can associate a sensation with a deep pocket, it's easy to interpret in such a way that I'm getting a toxic effect from such and such."

Still, the vast majority of MCS sufferers never file lawsuits or worker's compensation claims. Money is not what they're looking for. Says Gots, "People take care of you, are solicitous of you; you can't do certain things, like working. Clearly, getting mo ney from worker's comp or tort claims is a compensation, but frankly I think that's not a major stimulus."

What most MCS sufferers want is help. Their strange symptoms are their way of asking for it. Some people in trouble turn to alcohol or other drugs. Some become spouse or child abusers. People who believe they have MCS make themselves sick, expressing their unhappiness as physical illness. By blaming their troubles on outside forces--carpet makers, oil refiners, or house builders--they gain sympathy and avoid responsibility. But they continue to suffer.

If they see the right people, MCS sufferers can be helped. Not with houses built out of toilet-bowl material and unbleached, non-colored clothing, but by working through the real underlying cause of their problems. Staudenmayer, the Denver psychologist, cl aims a 75 percent success rate. In his office, he can expose a patient to the odor of a substance the patient blames for previous illness, or expose the patient to the basic chemical substance without the odor. Time and again Staudenmayer and the patient together discover that the connection is mental.

"One of the things that happens with these patients is their belief system gets more elaborate as they are treated by clinical ecologists," he says. "I try to give them a belief system more in line with the real world." Some of his patients refuse to accept the results of his tests and storm out of his office. But for others the experiment is an epiphany. "I do show them they have symptoms, but not necessarily caus ed by environmental agents," Staudenmayer says. "I teach them to regulate their stress response physiology and thereby mitigate their symptoms. The most important part of the relationship is trust and understanding....I don't challenge their belief system, I [just] say, 'Let's see if I can make you better.' When they start telling you their life story--which is often a horror story about their childhood--and you listen, some gain insight and progress to more insight-oriented psychotherapy."

Thus for many MC S sufferers, help is just a good, understanding therapist away. "It's clear just from talking with some [MCS patients] that they had ordinary depression," Black said when his study came out. "If they were offered standard antidepression treatments, their s ymptoms would probably go away very promptly." Sadly, for all too many that will never happen. With clinical ecologists raking in the bucks by keeping their patients ill, journalists who think they're doing MCS sufferers a favor by eschewing medical scienc e in favor of victims' beliefs, and government agencies like the EPA refusing to take a strong position that nonsense is nonsense, all too many sick people remain destined to stay that way, trapped in a hell of their own--and their doctor's--creation.