[AtMyWitsEnd]

Hello all.  I'll start off by mentioning that I am not a chemist and have no scientific background...which is why I'm turning to a forum such as this one in hopes of receiving some sound advice for a pretty significant health issue my family and I are enduring with respect to our belongings.  Thanks in advance for any advice you may be able to provide...and apologies for intruding on the discussions here.  Thing is, I am getting desperate because the problem is not subsiding and it is having a generally negative effect on the health of my family.  Limited IAQ inspections have been inconclusive and very expensive.  Hoping to get some advice here that will help me follow the most direct route to solving this problem.  Here is what is going on:

About 2.5 years ago we moved into a home which caused significant illness in certain family members (ear ringing, extreme fatigue, chronic cough, throat soreness, headache, etc.).  We had some limited indoor air quality testing performed which resulted in  a "likely not" determination with respect to anything mold related and an air formaldehyde level of about 0.3 ppm, which I understand is moderately high for a private residence.  IAQ professional suggested removing the items he thought were responsible for the high formaldehyde reading as he thought that was the cause of our symptoms.  We did so, but the symptoms persisted.  So we thought that it may have something to do with mold because of a recurrent water instrusion issue we had resolved.  We rented an ozone generator from sunbelt rentals and let it run for about 18 hours.  Post ozone treatment, the house had kind of a burnt, plasticy odor which ended up fading away completely after about a month.  Unfortunately, our symptoms still persisted.

We've since moved out of the home, however, most household items (including clothing) which were kept in the problem house for our two year stay there continue to give off a slightly musty odor and cause upper respiratory issues for many individuals who come into contact with them (sore throat, ear ache, sinus ache, cough).  These don't appear to be typical allergy related symptoms.  Repeated washings/disinfections of these items have not lessened the problem.  The items which appear to have the highest irritant potential tend to be synthetic (plastics, nylons, polyester, etc).

Now here is the strangest aspect of this entire thing.  Whenever new store bought items (this is noticed particularly with synthetic clothing, nylon bags, childrens' car seat liners, etc.) come into contact with older contaminated items (washed together, or even in the same space with each other), after a week or so, the new items start taking on the same properties....i.e. they start exhibiting the same irritant effects as the original items.   So it appears as though there is some sort of cross contamination occurring.


We did some additional air quality testing of our subsequent residence (VOC screen, aldehyde screen, carbon disulfide screen).  All aldehydes came back below limit of quantitation except formaldehyde which came back at 0.05ppm this time.  For the VOC screen the only items that came in higher than single digit ppb range were Ethyl Acetate at 0.75 ppm and Acetone at 0.098 ppm.  Curiously, Carbon Disulfide showed up at 0.015 ppm in our walk in closet, where many of these items were stored.

So now we have pretty much inconclusive results that don't really indicate what the cause of this problem could be.  I would love to be able to just take a couple of these problem items to a lab and ask the technician to give me a summary of everything that's offgassing from the particular items (organic, inorganic, etc.). 

Would this be the proper approach?  Is this even possible?  Many of the IAQ specialists I've talked to say it isn't that simple....in a sense you have to kind of know what you're looking for before you can find it.

In your respective experiences, would you have an idea of what it could likely be just based on my narrative?

We're at a complete loss here....if you've read this far, first of all thank you and sorry for taking up so much of your time, and secondly, I would sincerely/wholeheartedly appreciate any help/direction anyone here could provide.

Regards,

Mark

[Enthalpy]

Strange indeed.

Did you try to change your washing powder? Some of them make me sick, especially one washing liquid brand. This won't improve by washing the clothes, consistently with your observations. As well, washing machines can harbour pathogens, though washing powders are to suppress them. Try a launderette once?

If you observe a true contamination, the cause is more likely a living organism, not a chemical compound, which also tells why air analysis won't find chemicals.

The surprising part if you're afflicted by a mould - dust mite - germ - virus is that synthetic clothes are more affected. Pathogens tend to prefer natural fabrics.

[Stepan]

You first formaldehyde reading (o.30ppm) was very high. Normal is 0.04 (in Canada this is a law). The symptoms you described may be due to low humidity (Normal is 35-55 RH), elevated formaldehyde (new furniture, new house, fireplace, furnace, candles), or allergies.

If you have any known allergies, it is most likely that you react on something in a house. Try to see if it is seasonal, is it pet related, maybe plants, if it is food related, or any of household chemicals? 

You mentioned about cross contamination. I would suspect fabric softener.

Mold is a good guess, but the mold related allergy is very uncommon.

[AtMyWitsEnd]

All,

Earlier (Feb 2012 - "Strange Offgassing Issue") I posted regarding a strange offgassing issue that has affected my family's personal belongings which seems to have begun at a prior residence.   The good news is that I've managed to isolate the problem to a specific type of material.  The bad news is, the problem persists and, as strange as it sounds, seems to be self-propagating.

I'm posting here again to provide the specifics of the material affected in hopes that some of you folks experienced in chem may be able to point me toward what the actual mechanism may be so that I can solve this matter once and for all.

The affected material is PVC, more specifically anything made out of PVC (cell phone components, credit cards, any kind of vinyl, etc.).   Being that PVC is essentially everywhere, this has become a big problem.  None of us seem to have any problems when in the vicinity of what I'll call "unaffected" PVC (new credit cards, newly purchased PVC items), however, when these new items are placed in the vicinity of the already exposed or affected PVC items for more than an hour or so, they take on the same characteristics which I describe below.

The offgassing from what I'll refer to as the "tainted" PVC items appears to be odorless, but the  health effects are very rapid and pretty strong.  Within a minute, most people which have come into contact with these items start to feel nasal discomfort, metallic/sour taste in mouth, dull headache behind eyes (presumably sinus related), earache, and in some cases dark circles/puffiness under eyes.   These symptoms persist and gradually worsen until these tainted items are put away.

I readily admit that this sounds like something out of the twilight zone, but it is happening.   Fairly small tainted items (ie, like a credit card) will fill a large room with the noxious gas within a few minutes when left out in the open.  Some sensitive people in adjacent rooms will even start to feel it after a while.

I tried to eliminate the problem by eliminating all tainted PVC items from our environment.   That expensive exercise resulted in failure, probably due to the fact that some smaller items were missed and certain other PVC items (like some car interior components) can't just be disposed of and replaced.  Now, whatever was missed appears to have caused the new replacement pvc items to take on similar noxious characteristics.

Since PVC is the only common plastic I'm aware of which contains a halogen, I'm thinking it may be possible that there is some sort of chlorinated compound responsible for this action. 

So I suppose the ultimate question is: What gas is interacting with "untainted" PVC items to cause them to permanently take on these characteristics?  Is this some kind of autocatalytic process which allows the problem to move from old items to new items?  I should mention that none of these tainted items are ever subjected to any extremes of temperature.  Everything is occurring at room temp.  My only remaining hope is to determine exactly what the process of self-propagation is so that I can evaluate the options for putting a stop to it.

Any help anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks your responses to my prior post.

Mark

[curiouscat]

Can a gas test be conducted to identify what  molecule it is that's offgassing from PVC? Maybe a GCMS after heating the sample to offgas it?

[Scott_Chr]

Has anyone answered or found a resolution to this issue?  I am currently experiencing the same problem with our house, plastics, cars.  We too have moved from our house and have hired Mold Assessment Specialists, VOC specialist and still don't have a clear answer as to the root cause.  No new furniture has been introduced to the home.

The only issue I have been able to round this down to is the use of a product called Microban, which is an antimicrobial  --  Phenyl phenol and diisobulylphenoxyethoxy ethyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride monohydrate.

Does this sound like a product that could cause these effects?

RE:Strange offgassing issue

[Bunsenbrenner]

Would also be very much interested if there has been progress in resolving and getting to the source of the issue, since having similar issues.