Allergic to the twentieth century

In this groundbreaking report from the medical front lines, critically acclaimed science writer Peter Radetsky tackles the controversial and insidious new disease that is just beginning to get the attention it deserves: multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS).

As Radetsky explains, MCS is a reaction to any of a number of toxic chemical compounds that are so central to modern life as to be virtually inescapable. The offending agents can be insect sprays, new carpets, paints, building materials, perfumes, food preservatives, or a host of other chemicals that we are exposed to every minute of every day.

The symptoms - maddeningly vague yet frighteningly familiar - range from conventional allergic reactions, such as sneezing and watery eyes, to chronic headaches, fatigue, memory loss, nausea, dizziness, and worse. More than thirty-seven million people suffer from some degree of chemical sensitivity.

Now, at a time when tens of thousands of Gulf War veterans are registering complaints that are hauntingly similar to those of MCS sufferers, Radetsky adds his voice to those of doctors who are desperately fighting to inform the public that many of today's undiagnosable illnesses are treatable once they are recognized as MCS. He examines techniques that hold the harmful effects of this sickness at bay and suggests the right questions to ask when your health is threatened by our increasingly toxic world.

Yet, as is made painfully clear in the chilling case histories Radetsky sets forth, most doctors continue to dismiss this new sickness as psychosomatic - and this is precisely what we can least afford to do. With more and more people contracting MCS each day, these victims may very well be, like the fabled canaries in the coal mines, harbingers of an environmental catastrophe that will overtake us all.