Multiple Chemical Sensitivity:
Toxicological Questions and Mechanisms
General and Applied Toxicology, (2009)DOI: 10.1002/9780470744307.gat091
Description
One of the biggest reasons why chemical sensitivity has been rejected in mainstream medicine is because it is unclear how a person could be sensitive to so many completely different classes of chemicals—organophosphates, organic solvents, heavy metals, etc.
There is no single detoxification pathway in the body for all these classes of chemicals, so when we say we detoxify chemicals poorly in general, skeptics are understandably suspicious. In fact, this has been the primary argument against the physiological possibility of MCS made for the World Health Organization and American medical bodies for decades (see Ronald Gots).
In this paper, Martin Pall seeks to resolve this and many other important questions about MCS: His answer is that we don't necessarily detoxify chemicals any different than others, but that our bodies, and particularly our brains, have become primed for a noxious cycle of oxidative stress, to which various classes of chemicals contribute, along with many other potential stressors, including energy output, EMFs, strong smells, harsh light and many more potential stressors.
"How can so many diverse chemicals produce a common response, namely initiating cases of MCS and also eliciting responses in those already chemically sensitive? By acting along different pathways to produce a series of common responses, notably increased NMDA activity, intracellular calcium, NO and ONOO−."