warning: boring statistics

Today I got to wondering where people get the statistics for how many EIs (people with MCS) there are in this country. I'd heard 15 to 37% of the population have some sort of chemical sensitivity, and it turns out that these numbers come from studies by IR Bell in the mid-90s.

From what I read about Bell's studies on the US Department of Health website, the 15% comes from college students reporting trouble with at least 4 out of 5 common chemicals/products (like paint) and the 37% from old people reporting the same. Those people, of which I most definitely was one in college, probably don't consider themselves chemically sensitive and may even think MCS is a psychological problem. All I know is that I definitely count them as chemically sensitive, and I wish somebody had taught me all about this in college so that I would right now be a productive member of society.

I also turned up this guy's work indicating that we have elevated levels of nitric oxide and peroxynitride in our systems, but no one knows why. He says epidemiologists report that about 3.5% of the US population have severe MCS and 9 to 16% have moderate MCS.

So, I learned where some numbers came from, but not everyone appreciates numbers and references as much as I do (not that I got anything on the epidemiologists in the previous paragraph), so here's a picture of a Desert Museum prairie dog: