Re: Re: Bathroom odors related to carpet? Bathroom has no carpet!!

[Guest guest]

Dear Colleagues:I've heard that if one consumes ethanol, formaldehyde leaves in the exhaled breath.Has anyone else heard this?Life Energy Associateswww.LifeEnergyAssoc.com20 Darton StreetConcord, MA 01742 Re: Re: Bathroom odors related to carpet? Bathroom has no carpet!!

When I worked in chemical synthesis labs it was obvious that the volatile chemicals I inhaled during the day would come out of my pores when I showered or perspired, or exhaled, later.

One day I was working with a sulfur-based popcorn flavor compound and sweat from the back of my neck got into the pillow. I had to throw out the pillow because the popcorn smell never came out of it, and I had kept it for months just to see if the smell would go away.

This absorption and desorption of inhaled volatiles from the body happens all day long in everyone, people just aren't aware of it.

Certainly there is absorption directly into and onto, and desorption from, the skin as well.

Steve Temes

I dont remember the original scenario, but this reminds me of my own experience with carpet and showers. I am not sensitive to chemicals, but I have had reactions to new carpet twice in the past.Both times the carpet was not in my home; it was in my office. I got headache and sore throat. But both times I would notice a smell of VOC's when I took a shower. I thought it was either that the chemicals were in my system and coming out my pores or just had condensed on my skin and the hot water made them vaporize.

[Guest guest]

ethanol is broken down to acetaldehyde and then to acetic acid. I know this because i just got acetaldehyde poisoning by eating "alcohol inky cap" mushrooms and then having a glass of wine! The mushroom, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprinopsis_atramentaria inhibits the breakdown of acetaldehyde. It was yummy, though!-----Original Message-----From: iequality [mailto:iequality ]On Behalf Of sagefarm@...Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 9:59 AMTo: iequality Subject: Re: Re: Bathroom odors related to carpet? Bathroom has no carpet!! Dear Colleagues:I've heard that if one consumes ethanol, formaldehyde leaves in the exhaled breath.Has anyone else heard this?Life Energy Associateswww.LifeEnergyAssoc.com20 Darton StreetConcord, MA 01742 Re: Re: Bathroom odors related to carpet? Bathroom has no carpet!! When I worked in chemical synthesis labs it was obvious that the volatile chemicals I inhaled during the day would come out of my pores when I showered or perspired, or exhaled, later.One day I was working with a sulfur-based popcorn flavor compound and sweat from the back of my neck got into the pillow. I had to throw out the pillow because the popcorn smell never came out of it, and I had kept it for months just to see if the smell would go away.This absorption and desorption of inhaled volatiles from the body happens all day long in everyone, people just aren't aware of it.Certainly there is absorption directly into and onto, and desorption from, the skin as well. Steve Temes I dont remember the original scenario, but this reminds me of my own experience with carpet and showers. I am not sensitive to chemicals, but I have had reactions to new carpet twice in the past.Both times the carpet was not in my home; it was in my office. I got headache and sore throat. But both times I would notice a smell of VOC's when I took a shower. I thought it was either that the chemicals were in my system and coming out my pores or just had condensed on my skin and the hot water made them vaporize.

[Guest guest]

Hello, Perhaps if your drinking moonshine or something from a lousy distillery which didn't remove all of the methanol from the mix. Methanol to formaldehyde to formic acid. A very small amount of methanol is probably in most distilled beverages as a by-product of the fermentation and imperfect distillation. How much of that intermediate metabolite enters your blood stream to reach the alveoli in your lungs for gas exchange would probably be below the detection limit of an instrument. Ethanol to formaldehyde would be a strange enzyme sequence I believe. Liver disease?, maybe? Mike McCaffreyProject Manager Weavertown Group2 Dorrington Road, Carnegie, PA 15106Phone: Fax: -----Original Message-----From: iequality [mailto:iequality ]On Behalf Of Freund, AliceSent: Monday, December 13, 2010 12:39 PMTo: iequality Subject: RE: Re: Bathroom odors related to carpet? Bathroom has no carpet!! ethanol is broken down to acetaldehyde and then to acetic acid. I know this because i just got acetaldehyde poisoning by eating "alcohol inky cap" mushrooms and then having a glass of wine! The mushroom, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprinopsis_atramentaria inhibits the breakdown of acetaldehyde. It was yummy, though!-----Original Message-----From: iequality [mailto:iequality ]On Behalf Of sagefarm@...Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 9:59 AMTo: iequality Subject: Re: Re: Bathroom odors related to carpet? Bathroom has no carpet!! Dear Colleagues:I've heard that if one consumes ethanol, formaldehyde leaves in the exhaled breath.Has anyone else heard this?Life Energy Associateswww.LifeEnergyAssoc.com20 Darton StreetConcord, MA 01742 Re: Re: Bathroom odors related to carpet? Bathroom has no carpet!! When I worked in chemical synthesis labs it was obvious that the volatile chemicals I inhaled during the day would come out of my pores when I showered or perspired, or exhaled, later.One day I was working with a sulfur-based popcorn flavor compound and sweat from the back of my neck got into the pillow. I had to throw out the pillow because the popcorn smell never came out of it, and I had kept it for months just to see if the smell would go away.This absorption and desorption of inhaled volatiles from the body happens all day long in everyone, people just aren't aware of it.Certainly there is absorption directly into and onto, and desorption from, the skin as well. Steve Temes I dont remember the original scenario, but this reminds me of my own experience with carpet and showers. I am not sensitive to chemicals, but I have had reactions to new carpet twice in the past.Both times the carpet was not in my home; it was in my office. I got headache and sore throat. But both times I would notice a smell of VOC's when I took a shower. I thought it was either that the chemicals were in my system and coming out my pores or just had condensed on my skin and the hot water made them vaporize.

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[Guest guest]

Steve

Sorry for the late comment but I was off line for about a week.

You are telling the truth when you say that the basic/normal model of exposure and response is incomplete but a great deal of work, by many different people, is starting to address those shortcomings.

It is weird that a similar change is taking place in spirituality (about "who are we and why are we and the universe here") where the simple concepts have been pretty much discarded and the overview is being used to help searchers/students/teachers start to see the universe in a different light.

Everything is connected and we have not properly started to learn the ways in which supposedly-simple systems become very complex when they are viewed from a greater perspective. Some of the work on self-organization of large, simple systems has really helped (we looked at that in The Forum on Faith and Science) and the recent work on the true implications of chaos theory (which only applies to linear systems that are large) is showing a similar thrust as some of the spiritual work; the system can do unexpected things because the uncertainty of the sub-atomic components is not always lost in large assemblies (we thought that this uncertainties did not survive to the large scale, but they do).

One of the neat outcomes of all this new work is a better understanding of how important we are to the universe, especially at the local level but sometimes in the larger context; the observer really does change the atomic configurations that come about and, of many possible potentialities, the ones we focus upon are more likely to become reality (whatever 'reality' really means in this weird and wonderful universe).

Einstein was right when he said that the universe is not only weirder than we imagine, it is weirder than we can imagine!

The normal tools are useful for most situations but exceptions are not impossible, just less likely that we think they should be and they are highly influenced by our attitudes and attentions about and upon them. Those who want a single, simple answer are going to be unhappy with reality, I am afraid. They can say what is likely to occur but not correct about what may occur!! What we thought were anomalies or poor measurements were just unlikely but possible outcomes!

Jim H. White System Science Consulting

Re: Bathroom odors related to carpet? Bathroom has no carpet!!

Consider the possibility that something coming from the carpet has sensitized the homeowner, and as a result of that sensitization the homeowner both perceives a much stronger odor and experiences a stronger reaction to the chlorine which had always been there. It is not uncommon for a sensitized person to need to filter chlorine (in various forms) from the shower.Consider also the possibility that there is a synergy between something coming from the carpet, and whatever is in the water. 20 seconds is about right for enough water to get atomized by the shower head for the homeowner to start absorbing it through both smelling (nasal passages) and breathing (lung surface) pathways. It doesn't matter whether the carpet-origin "stuff" and water-origin "stuff" are mixing in the bathroom air, or simply in the person's bloodstream.There have been enough anecdotes through the last few decades about sensitization horror stories involving new carpet that it is clear the basic theory, the basic mental model, used by various professions and by science is incomplete. Somehow I suspect variations in the chemical composition of carpet (+dye, +stain resist, etc) from lot to lot, combined with genetic variations in people, combined with co-exposures, lead to some corner cases where specific individuals/families are seriously chemically injured by specific lots of carpet. To be blunt, we don't know enough to tell carpet manufacturers how to avoid this, nor to tell families that they are at much higher risk given their genetics or exposure/sensitization history. Whether to panic and yank the carpet out is a judgment call.>> Friends and colleagues -> > Thank you for your many comments, which I have passed on to the home> owner.> > I failed to be clear enough for some of you: THE BATHROOM DOES NOT HAVE> CARPET. Bathrooms, kitchens, and laundry rooms are all without carpet.> > However, we found some studies that link new carpet and drinking water> treated with chlorine dioxide. See> http://www.waterrf.org/Research/ResearchTopics/StateOfTheScienceReports/TasteandOdorResearch.pdf> . It seems possible for the VOCs from the carpet would be spread into> every room of the house, and react with water where it is used.> > In one report, the researcher created a strong nasty odor overnight from> carpet plus ClO2. By contrast, my homeowner says it emerges from the> shower in 20 seconds. That reaction time concerns me greatly -- wouldn't> the researcher have noticed a reaction that fast? Is the carpet> involved? Well, this problem only started after the carpet was> installed -- and the carpet is glued on with a regular-VOC product, not> low-VOC. So 'tis a puzzlement.> > Lastly, the homeowner might use some sort of water treatment. A> different shower head, for instance, a whole house water filter, or if> the problem comes from water standing in a pipe, to run the water a long> time to flush the pipes out. He is still considering his options.> > Again, thank you for your comments.> > > Henry Slack> slack.henry@...>