8 ms·

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

by treis 6y ago

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.

lazide 6y ago
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.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  I though the “placebo effect” is just regression to the mean. I.e. “sick people tend to get better”
  - orangeoxidation 6y ago
    That doesn't seem to be all of it. See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo
  - Stupulous 6y ago
    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 https://ebmh.bmj.com/content/5/1/15 or https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12535498/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12535498/
    - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
      Interesting, it looks like the studies I was thinking of are fairly old: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/study-finds-placebo-effec/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/study-finds-place...
      - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
        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.
    - spider-mario 6y ago
      Only in subjective outcomes. There was no objective outcome where an effect could be perceived.
  - lazide 6y ago
    It is quite measurably not, oddly - https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-power-of-the-placebo-effect https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-power-of-th... 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. Pretty weird eh?
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      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.
  - jrgoff 6y ago
    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-effect https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/what-is-the-placebo-ef...
  - varajelle 6y ago
    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, ...
- spider-mario 6y ago
  > Just like the placebo effect causes real, very significant healing effects No, not really. https://www.painscience.com/articles/placebo-power-hype.php https://www.painscience.com/articles/placebo-power-hype.php Edit: gee, apparently I hit a sensitive topic. I did not realize that Hacker News was so attached to a belief in such a strong placebo effect.
macspoofing 6y ago
>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.
- GavinMcG 6y ago
  1) It's not in San Francisco. 2) The development was explicitly expedited with permission of the city. 3) She actually collected data on both tVOCs and her physical symptoms. There's absolutely room for skepticism, but dismissing it out of hand by equating it to cell-tower crazies is ridiculous.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >There's absolutely room for skepticism 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?
    - deleted 6y ago
amelius 6y ago
They should try entering the building with an oxygen supply, see if this triggers the symptoms.
Sunspark 6y ago
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.
loceng 6y ago
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.
- treis 6y ago
  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.
  - GavinMcG 6y ago
    FTA: 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
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      If you are interested in primary sources, the water board site for the Synertek cleanup is at https://geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/profile_report?global_id=SL721241222&mytab=esidata&subcmd=edfsummarytable#esidata https://geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/profile_report?global_... This 2006 site report does not show the pollution extending under the apartment site, but who knows. https://documents.geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/regulators/deliverable_documents/1085114002/43S0124%20Monitored%20Natural%20Attenuation%20Investigation%202005%20Annual%20Report.pdf https://documents.geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/regulators/d...
deftnerd 6y ago
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
- ericbarrett 6y ago
  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.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    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.
    - Varriount 6y ago
      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.
quickthrowman 6y ago
> A 10 bpm drop then rise correlated with moving into and out of the apartment is pretty strong evidence of something. Some people experience high blood pressure because of anxiety in a clinical setting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_coat_hypertension https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_coat_hypertension
vagrantJin 6y ago
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.
- koboll 6y ago
  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.
- void_mint 6y ago
  > This is a forum with self professed reasonable people In what way is the author being unreasonable? By your own post, it could be anything, including exactly what the author said, no?
petertodd 6y ago
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. https://www.healthline.com/health/white-coat-syndrome https://www.healthline.com/health/white-coat-syndrome
sgath92 6y ago
> 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.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ubertoop 6y ago
You know what can easily induce a 10+ heart rate increase? The perception of danger, aka, FEAR. An entirely mental process.
- danaliv 6y ago
  Ok, but she experienced a decrease while living in this building. And doctors said that is consistent with exposure to VOCs.
  - ubertoop 6y ago
    Oh, derp. My mistake... I read the OPs comment as the opposite for some reason.
wruza 6y ago
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.

by treis 6y ago

lazide 6y ago

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.

fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
I though the “placebo effect” is just regression to the mean. I.e. “sick people tend to get better”
- orangeoxidation 6y ago
  That doesn't seem to be all of it. See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo
- Stupulous 6y ago
  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 https://ebmh.bmj.com/content/5/1/15 or https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12535498/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12535498/
  - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
    Interesting, it looks like the studies I was thinking of are fairly old: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/study-finds-placebo-effec/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/study-finds-place...
    - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
      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.
  - spider-mario 6y ago
    Only in subjective outcomes. There was no objective outcome where an effect could be perceived.
- lazide 6y ago
  It is quite measurably not, oddly - https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-power-of-the-placebo-effect https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-power-of-th... 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. Pretty weird eh?
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    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.
- jrgoff 6y ago
  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-effect https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/what-is-the-placebo-ef...
- varajelle 6y ago
  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, ...
spider-mario 6y ago
> Just like the placebo effect causes real, very significant healing effects No, not really. https://www.painscience.com/articles/placebo-power-hype.php https://www.painscience.com/articles/placebo-power-hype.php Edit: gee, apparently I hit a sensitive topic. I did not realize that Hacker News was so attached to a belief in such a strong placebo effect.

macspoofing 6y ago

>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.

GavinMcG 6y ago
1) It's not in San Francisco. 2) The development was explicitly expedited with permission of the city. 3) She actually collected data on both tVOCs and her physical symptoms. There's absolutely room for skepticism, but dismissing it out of hand by equating it to cell-tower crazies is ridiculous.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >There's absolutely room for skepticism 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?
  - deleted 6y ago

amelius 6y ago

They should try entering the building with an oxygen supply, see if this triggers the symptoms.

Sunspark 6y ago

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.

loceng 6y ago

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.

treis 6y ago
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.
- GavinMcG 6y ago
  FTA: 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
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    If you are interested in primary sources, the water board site for the Synertek cleanup is at https://geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/profile_report?global_id=SL721241222&mytab=esidata&subcmd=edfsummarytable#esidata https://geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/profile_report?global_... This 2006 site report does not show the pollution extending under the apartment site, but who knows. https://documents.geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/regulators/deliverable_documents/1085114002/43S0124%20Monitored%20Natural%20Attenuation%20Investigation%202005%20Annual%20Report.pdf https://documents.geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/regulators/d...

deftnerd 6y ago

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

ericbarrett 6y ago
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.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  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.
  - Varriount 6y ago
    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.

quickthrowman 6y ago

> A 10 bpm drop then rise correlated with moving into and out of the apartment is pretty strong evidence of something. Some people experience high blood pressure because of anxiety in a clinical setting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_coat_hypertension https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_coat_hypertension

vagrantJin 6y ago

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.

koboll 6y ago
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.
void_mint 6y ago
> This is a forum with self professed reasonable people In what way is the author being unreasonable? By your own post, it could be anything, including exactly what the author said, no?

petertodd 6y ago

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. https://www.healthline.com/health/white-coat-syndrome https://www.healthline.com/health/white-coat-syndrome

sgath92 6y ago

> 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.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ubertoop 6y ago

You know what can easily induce a 10+ heart rate increase? The perception of danger, aka, FEAR. An entirely mental process.

danaliv 6y ago
Ok, but she experienced a decrease while living in this building. And doctors said that is consistent with exposure to VOCs.
- ubertoop 6y ago
  Oh, derp. My mistake... I read the OPs comment as the opposite for some reason.

wruza 6y ago

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.