Compelling article. Definitely raises real problems deserving of scrutiny; technical, legal, and administrative. I was a little bothered that this is just a dir

Compelling article. Definitely raises real problems deserving of scrutiny; technical, legal, and administrative. I was a little bothered that this is just a direct reprinting of a single (admittedly deep and well-rounded) anecdotal experience, with no input from subject matter experts or independent attempts to contact other tenants. I sent the article to a friend who’s a hydrogeologist and environmental remediation consultant. Basically, the guy that cleanup companies send to assess these sites, take samples, and make remediation plans. His hot take: “Based on the info in the article alone I’d be very surprised if soil or groundwater VOCs were getting into her unit in concentrations high enough to cause acute health effects. Sounds like there’s a vapor venting system installed which in my experience alleviates all indoor air concerns. It could be that it exhausts near her window or something and concentrates in her apartment, but that would be a design/architectural issue more than an environmental issue per se. My initial suspicion would be that she bought cheap furniture or there’s cheap carpets or something that are offgassing VOCs.” A quick read from a single expert isn’t enough to draw conclusions, but I do wish the paper had bothered to seek that kind of input before publishing. Whatever the cause of this person’s symptoms may be, inadequate environmental remediation is a very real problem that deserves our concern. I wish the comments in this thread focused more on that. Instead the primary debate is whether a single person with apparently serious symptoms but no expertise, resources, or authority made the right technical call after being ignored by the people with all the expertise, resources, and authority. IMO that is the real story here: a person bought (a) furnishing for (b) a condo on a plot of (c) remediated land, experienced a health crisis, and the relevant parties (that she’s paying rent and taxes to!) all seem to have ghosted her instead of investigating which of those 3 things was the problem. After an experience like that, how could you blame her for doing her best to collect evidence and draw her own conclusions? Even if the cause she identified is wrong, it’s not imagined. This isn’t “cancer from cell towers” or “migraines from wind turbines”. You just won’t read an article from the victims of industrial pollution in Bayview/Hunter’s Point.