Mothball Exposure

[Masamune]

Hi everyone. I recently moved into a new one bedroom apartment which is the top floor of a house. When I first looked at the house there was a very strong mothball odor and the owner said that he had some squirrels in his attic and that he heard mothballs would get rid of them. He said it didn't work though. He placed the mothballs throughout the attic and also under the cupboards in my house. My bedroom closet opens up to the attic so the smell is especially bad there.

At the time I thought mothballs were just balls with a certain smell that repels insects so I didn't think much of the smell or the situation. I moved in and the smell was really horrible. I started to feel sick right away and I later found out that mothballs are a pesticide. Older mothballs contain naphthalene and newer ones contain 1,4-dichlorobenzene and if large quantities are used indoors it may cause serious respiratory problems. On a box of mothballs I saw that it said that inhaling the fumes could be fatal.

So I told the landlord about my health situation and that I wanted all of these mothballs out of the house. He got them out right away but the smell still lingered. All of my stuff now smells like mothballs and I have been feeling sick since I moved in on Saturday. So I told him and recommended that he buy some product such as http://www.imtek.biz/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=_sp-moth to absorb the chemicals in the air. He said he ordered them but they have not arrived yet.

I have been looking around for other ways to absorb the chemicals and remove the odor. I just tried some other volcanic materials that absorb smells, some odor absorbing gel, placing ground coffee around the house, heating some vinegar in a pot, and I just bought some charcoal that is supposed to absorb the chemicals. Has anyone else been through a situation like this with a pesticide exposure? What worked for you?

Also can anyone recommend any supplements that may help with a pesticide exposure? I have been taking lots of vitamin C and my doctor told me before to take selenium picolinate and phospholine by Xymogen for a pesticide so I have been taking those. I have also been using the FIR sauna. I will be talking to my doctor about the situation also. Thanks for any help. :)

 

[Lauranimal]

Masamune, you poor thing. From one difficult situation to another. I am so sorry to hear that you are dealing with yet another overwhelming challenge.

About 8 years ago, I bought a Tempurpedic bed. Long story short, they out-gas chemicals. Especially in the first couple of weeks out of the package. The day it was delivered, I was so relieved to finally get a comfortable bed! They delivered it and set it up and I headed off to work a 14 hour day.

Got home exhausted. Fell in to bed and as I was falling asleep and smelling the fumes, I thought to myself, "Sh!te! This cant be good." I woke up with a rash all over my chest and neck and felt nausiated. I immediately rubbed some rather expensive pycnogenol cream over the rash, and it cleared up within a few hours.

I also took 100mg of Pycnogenol (aka: Pinebark extract. It is in the same family as Grapeseed extract, but it IS different) & 300mg of Alpha Lipoic Acid a day. I added to that Nettles tea and Lotus root tea to help detox my lungs. I did this for 2 weeks and slept on the couch for 6 weeks.

I completely uncovered the bed and opened the windows in my bedroom and had my roommates jump all over it and roll around on it to press some of the trapped air out of it every day. They thought it was fun, and didn't seem to be affected by it, where-as i couldn't even enter the room.

Good luck with this one. Hopefully it will be resolved quickly.

 

[Cumulus]

Hello Masamune

Para-dichlorobenzene is highly lipophilic (fat-soluble), and should be rapidly adsorbed by activated charcoal. I don't know where you live; if you are in the States, you can find activated charcoal as a supplement in most health food stores. Read the label and avoid anything that has additional ingredients other than gelatin capsules to contain the charcoal (it's messy). I usually buy Nature's Way.

You can take the capsules by mouth, with water. An old fashioned equivalent was burnt toast, but that's not chemically clean, so I'd recommend the charcoal.

You'll want to take the charcoal for a few days at least; these highly fat-soluble toxins often end up in the body fat, it takes a while to get the last trace residues out of there.

Important to know: the charcoal is NOT selective. It will also take up any vitamin supplements or prescription medications you are taking. Minerals don't tend to be taken up so much, but if you are on any prescriptions, charcoal may not be a good idea. So if you try this, you'd also want to discontinue some of the supplements you're taking. The sauna is a great idea, though, and should still be effective in combination with the charcoal.

I hope this is an additional potential solution for you.

Also, pet stores sell charcoal filters for cat litter pans. If you can rig one of these in front of a fan so that the air is blown through it (twist ties), you can get some quick, cheap air cleaning that way, but it has to be a porous enough filter not to impede the air flow (and you will want to change it a few times). There are air cleaners that use charcoal as well - Oreck for instance - but they tend to be much more expensive.

Good luck. What a thing to have to deal with!

PS after you've done all the charcoal you intend to do, if you try it, please consider milk thistle or silymarin, which is the active component in milk thistle. It's hepatoprotective - protects the liver, which is a target organ for fat-soluble pesticides. There's an interesting communication about successful use of milk thistle / silymarin to save some people who had eaten poisonous mushrooms. I'll see if I can find a link... here is one. (I don't know the conventions for posting links here. If I'm doing something I shouldn't, I hope this emergency situation can justify it in this instance.)

http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/milk-thistle-000266.htm

I'll try to gather some links for all this; but activated charcoal for detoxification following exposure to poisons is well known in standard medical practice, and is recommended in the Overdosage Treatment part of most prescription drug labeling, as well as the USP-DI (United States Pharmacopoeia - Drug Information).

 

[Pierre]

Hi Masamune,

Sodium bicarbonate is also a good agent to abosrb smells.

 

[Masamune]

Yeah it seems like I was scheduled for a serious pesticide exposure, I struggled against it with my last landlord as much as I could but as soon as I moved I got a surprise attack!

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Lauranimal, I never heard of pycnogenol before and I'll look into it. Also I'll see if those teas are sold at my health food store. I have taken a lot of alpha lipoic acid in the past but I think I am going to ask my doctor about it first next week.

Cumulus, yes charcoal is a good idea and it was one of the first things I thought of. I have taken some similar products in the past such as cholacol 2. I will talk to my doctor about this also when I see him. I am familiar with milk thistle and I think that there is some in some of the supplements that I am taking.

Charcoal filters are also a good idea and I will check that out because the pesticide is probably being blown through my vents when the fan is running.

Also thanks Belibaste I will pick up some baking soda. :)

 

[anart]

Yeah it seems like I was scheduled for a serious pesticide exposure, I struggled against it with my last landlord as much as I could but as soon as I moved I got a surprise attack!

I'm curious about how you can say it was a surprise attack when you noticed the strong smell before you actually rented the apartment. With your sensitivities, that seems like a very, very odd thing to do; to rent an apartment with such a strong smell - especially after what you'd just been through.

 

[1984]

Yeah it seems like I was scheduled for a serious pesticide exposure, I struggled against it with my last landlord as much as I could but as soon as I moved I got a surprise attack!

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Lauranimal, I never heard of pycnogenol before and I'll look into it. Also I'll see if those teas are sold at my health food store. I have taken a lot of alpha lipoic acid in the past but I think I am going to ask my doctor about it first next week.

Cumulus, yes charcoal is a good idea and it was one of the first things I thought of. I have taken some similar products in the past such as cholacol 2. I will talk to my doctor about this also when I see him. I am familiar with milk thistle and I think that there is some in some of the supplements that I am taking.

Charcoal filters are also a good idea and I will check that out because the pesticide is probably being blown through my vents when the fan is running.

Also thanks Belibaste I will pick up some baking soda. :)

It appears ridding the house of mothball smell is going to be a rather long battle. (_http://www.ehow.com/how_4453525_get-rid-mothball-smell.html)

Given your past situation, it causes me to ponder why you would have rented this place to begin with?

 

[Lauranimal]

quote from anart

I'm curious about how you can say it was a surprise attack when you noticed the strong smell before you actually rented the apartment.

quote from Masamune

At the time I thought mothballs were just balls with a certain smell that repels insects so I didn't think much of the smell or the situation

I didn't know anything about mothballs either. Thought the same thing, until I was exposed to it at someone's house.

 

[anart]

I didn't know anything about mothballs either. Thought the same thing, until I was exposed to it at someone's house.

Considering Mesamune's chemical sensitivity and the amount of time and energy he has put into safe guarding himself against it over the time he has been on the forum, it makes no sense that a strong smell of any type would not have made him take pause at renting this apartment - especially after the rental situation he just went through.

Anyone who is chemically sensitive (as I used to be) learns that it doesn't really matter what the smell is - if it's that strong, it's a problem.

One wonders, at this point, if Mesamune wasn't subconsciously looking for another situation in which he might be able to repeat his current conflict with his landlord - or - at least - be in a position to cause his landlord to have to take extraordinary measures to compensate for Mesamune's illness.

In other words - what dynamic is at play here that would cause Mesamune to immediately get into the same type of situation he just left under such duress?

 

[vinny]

One wonders, at this point, if Mesamune wasn't subconsciously looking for another situation in which he might be able to repeat his current conflict with his landlord - or - at least - be in a position to cause his landlord to have to take extraordinary measures to compensate for Mesamune's illness.

In other words - what dynamic is at play here that would cause Mesamune to immediately get into the same type of situation he just left under such duress?

I think the clue for Mesamune if he wishes to do some self observation here, is that this sounds somewhat similar to the behaviour patterns induced by narcissistic programming in which a person will repeatedly enter into similar dysfunctional relationships with a string of inappropriate partners - narcissistic damage causes the person to continually fall into / subconsciously seek out situations which trigger the same issues / needs / trigger factors, until the person becomes aware of those factors and is able to do some deprogramming. An appropriate question for Mesamune to ask himself here might be: what is it in him that might be setting him up for this 'repeat performance'? If he can get a handle on that, it might help to resolve the situation and break the cycle in future. That's gotta be motivation enough to do some careful introspection.

 

[Lauranimal]

from Nomad:

"...An appropriate question for Mesamune to ask himself here might be: what is it in him that might be setting him up for this 'repeat performance'? If he can get a handle on that, it might help to resolve the situation and break the cycle in future. That's gotta be motivation enough to do some careful introspection."

And since I seem to identify with Masamune in a number of ways, I am now asking this question of myself. I seem to have gotten a handle on the repeats of relationships; it is time to apply this question to my health.

Thank you.

from Anart:

"...Anyone who is chemically sensitive (as I used to be) learns that it doesn't really matter what the smell is - if it's that strong, it's a problem..."

I am curious, if you would not mind sharing your experience of how you overcame this physiological, mental & emotional construct. I apologise if you have already gone into this detail elsewhere.

 

[anart]

from Anart:

"...Anyone who is chemically sensitive (as I used to be) learns that it doesn't really matter what the smell is - if it's that strong, it's a problem..."

I am curious, if you would not mind sharing your experience of how you overcame this physiological, mental & emotional construct. I apologise if you have already gone into this detail elsewhere.

Not a problem at all. I got myself off of all pharmaceuticals (which doctors told me was impossible) and then I stopped eating dairy of any kind and began slowly detoxing through my diet. I've not done anything quite as thorough as Laura has with her detox, but the steps I did take over three years time (and am continuing to take) have turned my body from one that was extremely chemically sensitive (I couldn't even be in the same room with someone wearing perfume without hives breaking out, couldn't use scented anything, not even hair or skin products even if they only had 'natural scent' - and had severe and chronic asthma, joint pain, 'planar fasciitis', among other auto-immune symptoms).

After clearing my system of the pharmaceuticals and the dairy, all of those symptoms disappeared other than some remaining lower back pain and oral sensitivity to certain foods. At this stage, following the diet outlined here, with few exceptions, almost all of that is completely gone - very rarely I'll have a back pain flare up or a blemish from eating foods that I like but I shouldn't have. It's like inhabiting a different body. Now, if someone is wearing perfume, I might think it smells terrible, but no hives, or asthma attacks. The same thing with other chemicals that used to set me off.

So, in a word - detox.

 

[Masamune]

I didn't know anything about mothballs either. Thought the same thing, until I was exposed to it at someone's house.

Considering Mesamune's chemical sensitivity and the amount of time and energy he has put into safe guarding himself against it over the time he has been on the forum, it makes no sense that a strong smell of any type would not have made him take pause at renting this apartment - especially after the rental situation he just went through.

Anyone who is chemically sensitive (as I used to be) learns that it doesn't really matter what the smell is - if it's that strong, it's a problem.

One wonders, at this point, if Mesamune wasn't subconsciously looking for another situation in which he might be able to repeat his current conflict with his landlord - or - at least - be in a position to cause his landlord to have to take extraordinary measures to compensate for Mesamune's illness.

In other words - what dynamic is at play here that would cause Mesamune to immediately get into the same type of situation he just left under such duress?

Hi Anart and Nomad,
I agree that there is something going on here that keeps setting me up for uncomfortable/difficult situations. I think now that it is some emotional programs from my past that keep me sabotaging myself, hurting myself, and then seeking comfort/love from people to fill myself in with what is missing.

And it does seem a little silly that I just jumped into this type of situation right after all I wrote about my last landlord situation. But the situation is not exactly as you describe above. I'll give a little more background on the situation.

I think I wrote a little about this in the thread about my roommate but a big thing that I learned from the situation is that I am not really as sensitive to chemicals as I thought. My house was sprayed and it affected me only slightly, I felt the effect of the chemical but it did not really cause many adverse affects and I was back to normal in a few days. My doctor even told me I was in better condition the next appointment after the exposure. So really I learned that I have improved quite a bit healthwise over the years. Before someone spraying some type of commercial cleaner in the house would cause me to have cold like symptoms for a few days but now these chemicals don't really bother me. My body can detoxify much more efficiently now. So the mothball smell was not a very important issue at the time.

I just had a very quick walkthrough of the place and he told me then that the mothballs did not do as he had intended so I assumed that he would get rid of the mothballs and the smell before I would have the time to move in. Also it was not like I had many options to choose from when I was deciding on where to live. It was pretty much my only choice at the last minute.

I had been staying over past my lease with my old landlord in January while I looked for another place to live. I had been looking for a month or so and nothing worked out with the terms I was seeking. The main problem was that I was looking for a short term lease for just this semester because I am undecided on what I want to do for the summer. So basically I had this house, which at first turned me down due to the short term lease but then later reconsidered, or another duplex which was in a bad area and did not have a washer/dryer or dishwasher.

This house had pretty much everything that I wanted and really I didn't even think about the mothball smell. Possibly it was a mental block, I was surprised also that I did not think about the possible chemicals before choosing it. I really thought that he would have the mothballs out and that the smell would be gone.

I had checked on about 30 places and only these two worked out and time was running out. So I chose the house and moved in 2 days after I saw it.

Also I think that the situation with the mothballs is already over. The smell is significantly better and I am feeling a lot better today. Vitamin C really helped a lot. There was no conflict with my landlord, he was very helpful and understanding about the situation. He thought the smell would just blow out the window also. I think it is reasonable to ask the landlord to correct the situation that he created which may potentially be harmful/irritating to his tenant. I also don't think that spending $20-30 to help with the smell that he caused is extraordinary and he didn't have any problem with it.

But I have been thinking about why would I get right back into this situation, it does seem interesting that this would happen right after all I have been through. I will need to think about it more but I think that Nomad is on to something and that it is probably some programming that causes me to get into situations that causes me to use up all my energy just dealing with things so that I cannot accomplish what I want to do and so I am always a failure, or never grow. I am definitely working on this and I have been thinking that I have a lot of emotional issues that I need to release from my past. I went through a period where I was on a lot of drugs and I was completely blocked from feeling these emotions and I have a hard time even remembering the painful things that happened.

Also I have been thinking a lot about my family dynamics and have spoken with my counselor about this. I will write more in my family thread but I am coming to terms with my drug addict mother and sister and I hope to get further help on this issue.