Many workers who speculate about multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) have devised a large number of hypothetical constructs designed to explain the phenomena. Too often these are not logically connected to the larger body of scientific thought but instead appeal to ideas not documented in accessible literature and often appearing metaphysical in nature.

1 Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Chemical Engineering Dept., 81310, UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia. 2 The University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus, Dept. of Chemical and Environmental Engineering/ Centre of Excellence for Green Technologies, Broga Road, 43500 Semenyih, Selangor, Malaysia. 3 Aalto University, School of Biotechnology and Chemical Technology, P.O. Box 16100, FIN-00076 Aalto, Fi...

Chemists routinely create models of reaction systems to understand reaction mechanisms, kinetic properties, process yields under various operating conditions, or the impact of chemicals on man and the environment. As opposed to concise physical laws, these models are attempts to mimic the system by hypothesizing, extracting, and encoding system features (e.g. a potentially relevant reaction pat...

This article provides an overview of the scientific literature in which chemically sensitive patients have been directly evaluated. For that purpose, consideration of various case definitions is offered along with summaries of subjects' demographic profiles, exposure characteristics, and symptom profiles across studies. Controlled investigations of chemically sensitive subjects without other or...

INTRODUCTION The chemical shift artifact (CSA) results from temporally undersampling a spatial-spectral distribution along a tilted k-t trajectory. This is illustrated in Fig. 1 for the case of H imaging. Figure 1(a) shows a typical H spatial-spectral distribution, in which the two predominant spectral components are from lipid and water protons. Figure 1(b) shows the k-t space sampling pattern...

BACKGROUND Escalating numbers of people throughout the world are presenting to primary care physicians, allergists, and immunologists with myriad clinical symptoms after low-level exposure to assorted everyday chemicals such as smoke, perfumes, air fresheners, paints, glues, and other products. This clinical state is referred to by various diagnostic labels, including multiple chemical sensitiv...

Chemical sensitivity appears to be an elusive phenomenon. Studies on individual differences in susceptibility may provide glimpses into the range of sensitivity in a population, which can be used for further study. Preliminary evidence in laboratory animals suggests the range of sensitivity to manufactured chemicals may span orders of magnitude. Determining the reasons that underlie individual ...

In this paper, a description of olfactory anatomy is presented, followed by a brief review of modern procedures for testing olfactory function. Information from the sole study which has quantitatively examined olfactory function in patients with apparent multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) is presented. In essence, this study suggests that MCS is associated with increased nasal airflow resistan...