[00:00:00] Aaron Goodman: You’re listening to the Chemical Sensitivity Podcast. I’m Aaron Goodman. We recently had a small leak in our kitchen. Our water filter overflowed, ran down the wall, and exited the house. It was my fault. I wasn’t sleeping well, had a string of MCS reactions, and I filled the countertop water filter too much.

The cabinets in the kitchen soaked up the water, as did the drywall and insulation. When it comes to the repair, it’s relatively minor, but as you know, there’s a ton of research to do. What kind of drywall won’t off-gas VOCs? How can I coat new fiberboard cabinets so they don’t leach chemicals into the house?

The kitchen floor needs to be sanded and finished. What can I use so I can maintain my health? It’s complicated — not my area — but essential to get it right. Anyone with MCS who’s moved into a new home, thought about renovating from the simple to the complicated, has had to do this mental work. Fortunately, we have each other.

This kind of resource didn’t exist years ago, before we could come together online. But it’s not only about housing and how to make it safe. As one of my guests on the Chemical Sensitivity Podcast, Isabella Clark — a researcher in Oregon in the U.S. who spent a long time speaking with people with MCS — says, there’s a ton of emotional and physical labor that comes with this illness.

I’m gonna do something. I’m gonna give myself a minute to think of some of the things I’ve had to research — aside from the house repairs — to make sure they don’t trigger a reaction. This is not gonna be comprehensive. This illness requires that we stay vigilant all the time. One slip, one exposure, one breath — to use the cliché — can lead to what can feel like being hit by a train.

Okay, here it goes. Kids’ toothpaste. New pants that don’t contain spandex — I recently read it’s toxic — and elastin might be better. A jacket that’s waterproof and warm without toxic coating. Another water filter that won’t easily overflow. A shower filter — I’ve been meaning to search for one. Okay, is that a minute yet?

Okay, my mind’s looping back to the renos — the drywall, the floor stain, the coating for the cabinets. I’m so glad we have each other, all of us with MCS, and we’re always asking each other for feedback. Our lived experience counts for so much. There’s so much work that comes with having MCS, and I take some comfort knowing we are experiencing it in our own individual ways and also together. And we’re creating a hub of knowledge and care.

You’re listening to the Chemical Sensitivity Podcast. I’m Aaron Goodman. I’m a journalist, documentary maker, and researcher, but I’m also someone who’s lived with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, or MCS, for years. MCS affects millions around the world. It’s a condition that makes everyday life extremely challenging and unpredictable. Fragrance, air fresheners, fresh paint, scented laundry products on someone’s clothing, and a lot more can trigger exhaustion, brain fog, muscle pain, rashes, and a wide range of symptoms.

And yet, for all its impacts, MCS remains largely invisible. Most doctors dismiss it. Employers rarely accommodate it. Even friends and family struggle to understand. This podcast aims to change that. We dive into the latest research, share real stories, and explore how people navigate life with an illness — an illness many refuse to see.

In this episode, I’m speaking with Miriam Diamond, PhD. Professor Diamond is an expert in chemical contaminants and a professor at the University of Toronto in Canada. She specializes in chemical management and is motivated by desire to reduce the impacts from toxins on humans and the environment.

You’ll hear Professor Diamond explore how chemicals are making a growing number of people around the globe ill, how there’s insufficient research into the harms of chemicals, the industries that create the most chemical waste, and the urgent and complicated need for greater chemical regulation, phasing out and banning harmful toxins, and more.

Dr. Diamond, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. Really appreciate it. Would you like to introduce yourself to folks, please?

[00:04:55] Miriam Diamond: Sure. My name is Miriam Diamond. I’m a professor at the University of Toronto. I’m in the Department of Earth Sciences, and I’m also cross-appointed to the School of the Environment, and I have a couple of other cross-appointments, but that doesn’t really matter.

What matters is that I’m really concerned about chemical emissions, exposures, and effects. I’ve been working on chemicals since — I don’t know — 1985, and as a professor since 1991. I’m concerned about where they come from, how they move through the environment, how we are exposed as people and how the ecosystem is exposed. And then what I’m really concerned about is implementing chemicals management to reduce exposures.

[00:05:40] Aaron Goodman: That’s excellent. You’re an ideal guest for this podcast, and I’m really happy that I found your research, and I think listeners will be delighted to be hearing from you and can take a look more at your work.

Couple questions before we get deeper into this. You could have chosen to look at anything in your career as an academic. Why chemicals, and are the stakes getting higher?

[00:06:03] Miriam Diamond: Why chemicals? When I started my PhD research — because my other training before that was a bit different — there was a lot of interest in the emerging topic of chemical pollution. So back in the 1980s, chemical pollution was an emerging issue. It was an emerging issue because there were some very highly polluted areas.

A river in the Great Lakes Basin on the U.S. side caught fire — it actually caught fire because there were so many pollutants in it. The river itself was flammable. Mm-hmm. There are many other locations that suffer from really high levels of contamination. We also had watershed events that increased concern for chemical pollution and exposure — so really bad events, such as an explosion of a chemical factory in Seveso, Italy, that exposed nearby populations to high levels of dioxins.

In the Great Lakes Basin, we had Love Canal, which was a repository of so much chemical waste. It was mothers of Love Canal that figured out that their kids and themselves were being exposed. Scientists denied it, didn’t know what was wrong, said it was all in your mind. It took the mothers to figure out — to pursue, to keep going on — figuring out that it was chemicals leaking from these landfill sites along the Love Canal, which, by the way, is near Niagara Falls. It was a site of numerous chemical production facilities — concern about chemical emissions.

But during my career, it’s shifted, actually. So it’s shifted from “I see a smokestack or a huge landfill that’s leaking and that’s causing the problem.” So, in wealthy countries, mostly in North America, for example, we’ve implemented regulations. We’ve tried to reduce — and we have reduced — emissions. But part of that has been achieved because we’ve offshored production, so that we as consumers are benefiting from a whole bunch of products that are made offshore, where the people producing them are experiencing high loads of chemical exposure. It’s unjust. It shouldn’t be, and we need to fix that.

[00:08:18] Aaron Goodman: And I’d like to ask you more about that as we move on, because this is the Chemical Sensitivity Podcast, and folks are listening by and large — people who live day in, day out with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. And you mentioned, you know, this phenomenon of being dismissed, mothers being dismissed after their children are made ill by chemicals.

I wonder if you have any thoughts or messages for listeners who have Multiple Chemical Sensitivity — who are often dismissed — because you know probably better than anyone about the harms that these chemicals cause to human health, and that we’re dealing with a legitimate illness.

[00:08:54] Miriam Diamond: As you said, I’m not an expert in Multiple Chemical Sensitivities. I’m not a health expert. What I do understand is chemical exposures. I also understand that too often mainstream experts dismiss the lived experience of people, and that dismissal is later overturned as evidence is found to scientifically support that lived experience.

Lived experience is important because of those living the experience, and we need to find solutions. And unfortunately, those with those lived experiences are the canaries in the coal mine. The science progresses to uncover the issues being experienced by those highly exposed, and then often comes to understand that those exposures are widespread throughout society. Those with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities are most sensitive. The rest of the population experiences some extent of the exposures and the adverse effects.

[00:10:07] Aaron Goodman: Yes. And you talked about mothers whose children were made ill, and you talked about the production of consumer products that are done overseas or internationally, where it’s less expensive to have these made. And I wonder — people may not recognize that they have Multiple Chemical Sensitivity after exposure; they may not have a diagnosis ’cause that’s difficult even to get here — but as you see it, are people developing illnesses as a result of exposures that could be part and parcel of chemical sensitivity?

[00:10:41] Miriam Diamond: There’s a large and growing body of evidence to show that the general population is experiencing exposures leading to adverse health outcomes. We know that within the general population, there is a group of people that’s more highly exposed — a group of people who are more sensitive or susceptible to the adverse effects from that exposure. Those two groups may overlap, right? Higher exposure with higher susceptibility to adverse effects.

I mentioned that I’m not a health expert, so I haven’t looked deeply at this.

[00:11:20] Aaron Goodman: Yes.

[00:11:20] Miriam Diamond: What I’m familiar with are the studies — and the abundant studies — that show poor health outcomes as a result of exposure to certain chemicals, and that’s what has motivated my research.

Mm-hmm. A trend that we should be knowledgeable about is that of chemical intensification and the fact that most of us live a lot of our lives indoors. So first I’m gonna talk about chemical intensification. It’s relevant to exposures. Many years back — and not totally including my lifespan, but at least in my parents’ lifespan and my grandparents’ — they lived in environments with fewer materials, and almost all of the materials were naturally occurring. Some of them were toxic too.

For example, floors were made of hardwood, to which a varnish was applied, or oils, and the oil would have to be repeatedly applied in order to protect the wood. It’s toxic — those varnishes are toxic, for sure. The environments we live in now are filled with a huge variety of synthetic materials. Few of us live in a home with simply hardwood floors, lath and plaster, and obviously paints covering them — the paints containing also their set of potentially harmful ingredients.

And add to that the upholstered furniture and all the stuff — and just all sorts of stuff. The stuff fills our homes, and so much of it comes from synthetic materials. So that’s the chemical intensification. The second point is that North Americans spend over 90% of our time indoors. The indoor environment is now understood to be really an important route of exposure, coupled with that chemical intensification, right, of all these synthetic materials.

As we understand and try to deal with climate change, we need to seal up our houses. That applies to people living in cold environments, where you want to burn fewer fossil fuels and reduce the cost of heating your house, so you want to seal it up there. And if you live in a very warm climate experiencing heating from climate change, you also want to seal up your house to prevent too much heat from coming in.

Sealing up your house is important for energy efficiency. Sealing up your house increases exposure to a whole bunch of different chemicals. What it means is that those chemicals are degassing from products and they’re not released through ventilation. And most of us choose not to live in drafty homes. Goodness knows, our great-grandparents lived in incredibly drafty homes and wore lots of wool sweaters. Most of us don’t tolerate that, so we seal up our homes. But by removing drafts, what we’re doing is removing the natural ventilation, which lowers the concentration of some of the chemicals in our homes. So those are two important trends to consider.

[00:14:37] Aaron Goodman: Absolutely. And folks with MCS are quite well versed in this, because we have to practice it on a daily basis, right? We have to make our homes as safe as possible and choose products and furniture and paints that don’t make us ill. And one of the challenges that I have is that I have to keep my windows closed because the laundry products that come through the window make me ill. So it’s difficult in that sense. I see you perhaps having questions about that.

Yeah. I wanna—

[00:15:02] Miriam Diamond: I want to ask you what laundry products come through your windows.

[00:15:04] Aaron Goodman: Yeah. Dryer sheets are a big problem. We live in a neighborhood, and about 50% of the time if I walk out the door — yeah, and this is something that people report across North America — we are exposed to toxic, highly fragranced fabric softener through dryer sheets that are emitted from people’s dryer vents, and that’s a major kryptonite for me and many folks.

[00:15:27] Miriam Diamond: I hear what you’re saying. You’ve got the lived experience — you know what’s going on.

[00:15:31] Aaron Goodman: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:15:32] Miriam Diamond: Our measurements say that many of the chemicals that we’re concerned with have much lower concentrations—

[00:15:36] Aaron Goodman: Outdoors, of course, because as you noted, the furniture that’s produced with synthetic materials — and as I say, people with MCS have to do our research and find the products that don’t off-gas, that are made— Like, for example, our family bought us a sofa recently, and there’s a lot of labor that we do as people to find products that we can bring into the home; we won’t have to off-gas them.

But I wonder, when you do these studies, if you come across things like this in the same way that people — like when I go to the gym or to judo with my kids — people who have highly scented laundry products on them are off-gassing. They make me ill in the same way. If I open my door and my neighbor is blowing dryer sheets through their dryer vent, that’s a source. And I think we hear in countries like Japan, products that didn’t used to be there — highly scented microcaps — actually fill neighborhoods and change the air quality. You can smell them, and people who don’t use them get ill, and they have to seal up their homes. So that’s sort of a double whammy, right? Have to seal ourselves in homes that are, in this modern world, going to have some chemical off-gassing.

[00:16:54] Miriam Diamond: Certainly, chemical waste is a very big problem. Mm-hmm. It’s a very big problem worldwide, and it is exacerbated by climate change. Mm-hmm. For example, there are many waste locations located in coastal areas that are subject to flooding, rising sea levels, so those chemicals can be mobilized from where we thought we were putting them.

Waste is definitely a big problem, and a very big problem is chemical waste moving from a wealthy country to a low-income country. Nine percent of plastics are recycled — only 9%. Too many of those plastics are making their way to low-income countries where they’re just dumped. I have a lot of problem — yeah — with chemical waste.

Mm-hmm. It comes down to us doing a better job of living within our means, finding ways to minimize waste, finding ways to reuse waste, and not imposing our waste on others.

[00:17:53] Aaron Goodman: Yeah, and I mean, you mentioned in your work — you talked about the Anthropocene and the impacts of chemical waste on the environment and wildlife — so there is a big impact.

[00:18:03] Miriam Diamond: Yes, it certainly is. All sorts of chemical waste — from your plastics to your radionuclides.

[00:18:11] Aaron Goodman: I want to just touch on the regulation piece, and part of the regulation challenges that you write about is manufacturing doubt. You know, you mentioned a number of chemical products where corporations have created a doubt about the harms that these cause.

So, for example, when I breathe a dryer sheet — I know that it’s causing me harm because it knocks me out; not completely knocks me to the ground — it’s a metaphor — it makes me very ill, as it does with a lot of people. I mentioned the laundry products in the judo studio, the body sprays. I know it’s harmful.

So how is it making its way to the shelf? Is part of it because the corporations cast doubt about the harms?

[00:18:51] Miriam Diamond: Let’s deal first with the regulation and secondly with the manufacture of doubt. Globally, high-income countries have regulatory systems that adjudicate which chemicals are safe, which aren’t safe. If they’re not safe — the very harmful chemicals — they’re hopefully removed from production and use, but many of them, if they’re not safe, are restricted for certain uses, for example.

I’m very familiar with the group of chemicals called phthalates. They’re used — the smaller— So it is a class of chemicals. The smaller molecules are used as fragrance keepers. They’re not fragrances. They come under the name “parfum.” Parfum is a catchall for a whole bunch of different chemicals that could be used. So those chemicals can cause respiratory constriction; they could cause some inflammation. So there’s concern about those chemicals.

Then there are chemicals in the same class, but they’re larger molecules. They’re used as plasticizers. It’s a different use of these chemicals. A plasticizer is a chemical that’s used to make a rigid polymer flexible. So a rigid polymer — the largest production volume of rigid polymers — is polyvinyl chloride. PVC is a completely rigid polymer; in other words, it doesn’t bend at all.

But then you put it into a product and you want it to be flexible — like a rubber duck. You need to add a plasticizer. The problem is that those plasticizers are not actually chemically attached. They’re added in, but not chemically attached. Over time, they’re released into the air.

One of the reasons why you know this is because you may have a vinyl article — for those of us who were older, we had vinyl binders and vinyl pencil cases and stuff like that. Over time, they cracked around the edges. The cracking around the edges means that the plasticizers degas over time, leaving behind the rigid polymer.

How are they regulated? Some of the phthalates are regulated in North America; in Europe, some of the phthalates are restricted from children’s products. I could tell you in Canada, for example, that some of the phthalates are restricted for use for products intended to be mouthed by children under the age of three. Some of them have been banned from use in any product intended for children.

Children are the intent of the legislation because children are more susceptible for higher exposure, and children are more susceptible to adverse effects should they be highly exposed. The restrictions are not complete. Some of the chemicals could be used in other products — for example, vinyl flooring. So if you’re little — you’re a kid — guess what? The phthalate isn’t in the toy you’re chewing on, but it’s in the vinyl floor that’s degassing, and that’s where you can get your exposure. So the restrictions are incomplete.

[00:22:11] Aaron Goodman: Yeah. And my understanding is that in some parts of the world — like the EU — the restrictions are tighter, or better, when it comes to personal care products as opposed to U.S. and Canada. Would you agree with that?

[00:22:24] Miriam Diamond: Yes. One of the advantages of the European system for the European Union is that under the legislation called REACH, all chemicals that are carcinogenic, mutagenic, reproductive toxicants are designated as such and restricted from use. North America does not have such blanket restrictions for carcinogenic, mutagenic, or reproductive toxicants, so that off the bat is an improvement.

The other advantage of the European legislation is that it has better provisions for tracking along supply chains. So right now we have very complicated supply chains. It’s very likely that the final retailer — the final producer even — doesn’t know all the chemicals that’s in their products. They buy, for example, plastic pellets from a producer of pellets. The pellet producer may understand the chemicals that have been added to the plastic pellets, but the formulator may not.

So we have these really complex supply chains, making it really challenging to figure out what’s in the product. Couple that with poor and incomplete labeling laws. The European Union has better restrictions and provisions regarding labeling and the restriction of carcinogens, mutagens, and reproductive toxicants.

[00:23:52] Aaron Goodman: As we aim towards wrapping up, I wonder if we could talk a little bit more about fragrance and labeling regulation, and in your own day to day, do you have any concerns when you go to the grocery store and you look at the shelves, or when you walk in your neighborhood or smell what the students at your university are wearing? Are there any— Do you share the concerns about the potency of these highly— products?

[00:24:17] Miriam Diamond: In the bigger sense, I am concerned about the use of highly scented products, and that can have an immediate adverse effect — notably on people with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities. That is a problem. In the bigger sense, I’m concerned with the growth of these and proliferation of these industries because of the larger environmental resources and damage that’s caused.

We in the wealthy world are just using too much stuff. We are just using too much stuff. We have too much stuff in our homes. It is just not sustainable. Every product entails resources that are mobilized to make the product. We use it and then we discard it. Eight billion people on the planet cannot be consuming at the level that many of us are in wealthy countries, and that’s— you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

[00:25:16] Aaron Goodman: That’s what’s happening, right? A lot of the products — the chemical intensification that we notice, even though we’re not experts in chemistry — we notice they smell stronger. We can smell them from across a room. They make us more ill. They last longer. And those products are being marketed around the world.

And let’s talk about the waste, right? How does the waste materialize? Where does it go — landfills, into the oceans? What’s the harm there?

[00:25:44] Miriam Diamond: Focusing just on personal care products—

[00:25:46] Aaron Goodman: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:47] Miriam Diamond: They have two ways to get into the environment. First is down the drain when we wash it off. Wastewater treatment plants are optimized to remove nutrients so that we don’t have too many nutrients in the water that receives that final treated effluent. And we need the final treated effluent to be good because we end up drinking the water — especially in locations without a lot of water. So California — you will be drinking more and more of your treated wastewater.

Wastewater treatment plants cannot remove all these synthetic chemicals, and that is really a problem. Don’t expect that they will be able to treat these chemicals in the near term. There are two reasons for that. We do have advanced wastewater treatment. It’s expensive. We’ve got a lot of competition for tax dollars, and more and more people don’t want to pay taxes. We have declining infrastructure. So that’s one — that’s the first place it goes.

[00:26:58] Aaron Goodman: We also hear the second — the antidepressants and the medications that end up— So we could imagine the scented laundry products, right, that go down into the water system — the dryer sheets that go into the atmosphere. All of that is creating significant pollution.

[00:27:13] Miriam Diamond: It is, but I want to go broader than the laundry sheets — mm-hmm — ’cause it’s a much bigger issue. Mm-hmm. And because I want us to bring our attention to all the cosmetics, all the products that we’re using — the products that are not necessary. It goes far beyond our laundering habits.

[00:27:30] Aaron Goodman: Absolutely. So I just—

[00:27:30] Miriam Diamond: I just really want to build that connection. So the other place that the waste goes is through landfills. At least in North America, the landfill leachate gets collected and treated. Again, you’ve got issues of incomplete removal of these chemicals.

But I just want to finish by saying there are steps that can be taken, and the first step is that the manufacturers need to step up to the plate. The manufacturers need to be formulating products that are safe for us. It’s their responsibility not to be producing and selling us unsafe product.

The second responsibility then indeed is for government, but government can’t do everything — especially as governments are under assault for being too bureaucratic, and people don’t want to pay taxes to support more government infrastructure. The last thing is: what governments could do is to pass legislation requiring better disclosure of ingredients. But I don’t think that’s the fundamental solution. First of all, labels go off. Not everybody can read a label, and labeling isn’t equitable. Not all people can afford choices in what they purchase. We should have solutions that are equitable for everybody.

[00:28:52] Aaron Goodman: You know, you’ve been doing this research for a long time. Do you have any hope that the manufacturers are listening? Because I think the consumers, one hopes, are catching on — certainly this population is. But — so maybe a two-part question: are consumers catching on, and are manufacturers going to act more ethically as a result of outreach?

[00:29:12] Miriam Diamond: Such as the podcast that you’re doing helps reach more people and helps us to make informed choices, if we can. An informed choice could be: I’m gonna have less stuff in my life. I’m just going to have less stuff in my house. My kids don’t need so many plastic toys with batteries — toys that light up and beep and so on. We just don’t need it all.

So I’m hoping that as consumers, we can make better choices, but not everybody has a choice. So we need to be very mindful of that. I believe that, for example, with your podcast, it reaches consumers and it reaches manufacturers—

[00:30:00] Aaron Goodman: Well—

[00:30:00] Miriam Diamond: So we work in partnership.

[00:30:02] Aaron Goodman: Yeah.

[00:30:03] Miriam Diamond: I do the science. You do the outreach. And as partners—

[00:30:07] Aaron Goodman: Yeah.

[00:30:07] Miriam Diamond: We go to the public and say, “These are some of the things that you can do to try to—”

[00:30:18] Aaron Goodman: Yeah.

[00:30:20] Miriam Diamond: Make yourself healthier—

[00:30:20] Aaron Goodman: We’re partners—

[00:30:20] Miriam Diamond: Yeah.

[00:30:18] Aaron Goodman: In this. We’re definitely partners. And I really appreciate your efforts and your work, collaboration, and — yeah — we really hope that the manufacturers and governments are there for us and start to do better. Thank you so much, Professor.

[00:30:33] Miriam Diamond: You’re very welcome. Thank you for having me.

[00:30:35] Aaron Goodman: Thank you for your important work. You’ve been listening to the Chemical Sensitivity Podcast. I’m the host and podcast creator, Aaron Goodman. The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast is by, for the MCS community. The podcast is generously supported by the Marilyn Brachman Hoffman Foundation and listeners like you.

If you wish to support the podcast, please visit chemicalsensitivitypodcast.org. Your support will continue making the podcast available and creating greater awareness about MCS. To learn more about the Chemical Sensitivity Podcast, follow the podcast on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok. And, as always, you can reach me at aaron@chemicalsensitivitypodcast.org. Thanks for listening.

The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast and its associated website are the work of Aaron Goodman and made possible with funds from the Marilyn Brachman Hoffman Foundation, supporting efforts to educate and inform physicians, scientists, and the public about Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. The content, opinions, findings, statements, and recommendations expressed in this Chemical Sensitivity Podcast and associated website do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of its sponsors.