If you work in an organic synthetic lab for an extended period of time, you can develop sensitisation towards bench-top solvents. Granted, the exposure rate is

If you work in an organic synthetic lab for an extended period of time, you can develop sensitisation towards bench-top solvents. Granted, the exposure rate is much much higher than the average person's exposure to "chemicals", but over the course of a lifetime, similar mechanisms are surely in place. When you consider factors like plastics leaching into drinks (and it goes without saying how ubiquitous plastic bottles are)and the accumulation of other chemicals through the food chain (think mercury concentrating up the chain into tuna), the exposure rate is probably much higher than we realise.