playing catch up

Yesterday I learned by watching a friend give a talk to a pesticide advisory board that organic pyrethrums, the kind you get from chrysanthemums, are a lot less toxic than the synthetic ones, which are 3-D instead of flat. That's about all I know because about then I had to leave the room, which was full of non-EIs (except for the speaker) and carpet. A while later I learned that I can give a mostly-comprehensible, ten-minute talk about living with MCS while developing a good case of the shakes. My friend, who essentially handled the theory part of MCS, reported that when my short talk on applied MCS got to the part where I use ammonia in the laundry because everything else leaves a residue, she saw some lightbulbs over people's heads. Apparently this (admittedly sympathetic) audience got the idea.

In today's news, using chlorine to bleach paper products like toilet paper creates dioxin and other things that'll kill you, but 'chlorine-free' bleach could just be chlorine dioxide, which doesn't make dioxin. It makes some other things, but those are believed to be not so bad.

I can caregive today, but I can't edit, so there are definitely consequences to hanging around in buildings with non-EIs. I suppose if there weren't, I'd be an engineer again already.