Sure. 'Something'.
The kind of account this person provided is reminiscent of personal testimonials of individuals who live close to cellular towers. And so far, it is only her account. How do you know she's a credible, objective observer? How do you know she isn't experiencing psychosomatic symptoms? And now she's fixating on 500 gallons of something or other because of some passing reference in a report...Maybe there is something buried in there, so what? Who says that has anything to do with anything?
Also, this line struck me: "it’s an outbreak of new housing developments on toxic land and water with laissez-faire oversight". San Francisco and 'laissez-faire' don't really go together. You know, the city that will deny development license if the proposed building will cast an overly large shadow over a playground. Come on.
Is there something here? Who the heck knows, anything is possible. The fact that so many just want to take her word for it without an ounce of skepticism is a little disappointing.
2) The development was explicitly expedited with permission of the city.
3) She actually collected data on both tVOCs and her physical symptoms.
There's absolutely room for skepticism, but dismissing it out of hand by equating it to cell-tower crazies is ridiculous.
Dismissing her symptoms as completely fabricated is ridiculous but I think it's entirely reasonable to dismiss her explanation for them out of hand because it is entirely on-par with cell-tower crazies spouting off nonsense about things they don't understand.
She was on the third floor, no one else is having symptoms, lead and arsenic contamination beneath a foot of dirt and a big thick concrete foundation is never going to plausibly cause very high VOC levels only in one third floor apartment. She even dismisses expert opinions that disagree with her idea as "some expert wordsmithing and spin". She even claims that it's contaminated the tap water, as if it must just come from the groundwater.
I find the claim that there's a high VOC level in an apartment causing numerous health problems completely reasonable. It's the blatantly ridiculous leap of blaming remediated soil contamination that makes me dismayed. Quite frankly it makes people dismiss real environmental health problems by throwing in that nonsense along with it.
There's tons of valid explanations here, maybe when the flooring was replaced they went with a different supplier for that faux wood laminate and it's off gassing formaldehyde. Maybe the carpet in some part of the apartment had a similar issue. Maybe the drywall had to be replaced in that unit in the past and it's contaminated akin to the imported Chinese drywall back in the 00s. Maybe the paint stripper the apartment complex maintenance worker used was based on DCM and he accidently tipped over the can and they just said "screw it, we're putting new flooring over it anyways".
There's a thousand different valid explanations here, her explanation is nowhere on the map.
Some sources: [1] https://www.haywardscore.com/articles/is-your-dishwasher-imp... [2] https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/826
I'll bite. How would that look like in your opinion? In other words, to which part of her story would you apply this skepticism?
>The development was explicitly expedited with permission of the city.
What does that have to do with anything?!!? This is a complete non-sequitur? You're throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.
>but dismissing it out of hand by equating it to cell-tower crazies is ridiculous
Why? People who believe they are harmed by cellular towers present very real symptoms. They are sincere. How do you you know her symptoms aren't psychosomatic?
I said there's room for skepticism because we don't know that it's not psychosomatic. But: she gathered environmental data, and reports completed prior to her moving there had already concluded that "VOCs were above residential limits and, in some cases, even above vapor intrusion risk levels." The developer had made plans for advanced vapor mitigation. One of the reasons the area was a Superfund site in the first place was due to VOCs. In other words, there are a number of external reasons to think this is plausible.
Is there evidence that psychosomatic effects can be so strong as to account for a measurable 10% drop in resting heart rate? Especially since her symptoms appeared before she even started measuring air quality.
I have no clue. Maybe. Maybe not.
What doesn't pass the smell test for me is that the author fixated on what she thinks is the cause of her symptoms for non-rational, arbitrary reasons. She decided her symptoms MUST be the result of her building being built on reclaimed land. Why? Well, she got a consumer sensor that shows her something and therefore that must be it. Maybe whatever that VOC sensor is showing has NOTHING to do with anything she has.
It's reminiscent of conspiracy theory thinking, where the conspiracy theorist encounters some unknown phenomena and instead of saying "I don't know", they decide on a solution (whether that be aliens, or illuminati or living on reclaimed land) and they cherry pick and interpret evidence in a way that supports their ad hoc conclusion.
The article didn't make any concrete accusations and she was just asking for an investigation. She didn't say causation, she said correlation. "I began to think that there was an important correlation between this data and my symptoms." Even when she saw high VOCs, she didn't assume it was the remediation site. " I knew the situation was likely going to be complicated and that the tVOC readings on my personal monitors were not going to be conclusive on their own, but my gut told me something was terribly wrong." She was open to the site not being the cause. "I was thinking: If you don’t want me to be worried about this chemical’s impact to my health, you should tell me exactly why it wasn’t included in the clean-up despite being above residential limits." + "So, what made me sick? While in the end everyone agreed it was VOCs, I may never know for certain if it was the chemicals in the soil or groundwater and, if so, which ones."
Also, she mentioned a few times that doctors, government, and even Irvine Company's public relations person admitted VOCs made her sick, but just didn't know where the VOCs came from.
None of that sounds like a conspiracy theory.
[1] https://sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Ashley-Gjov...
[2] https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h2750
[3] https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/chapter/quasi-experime...
Yes, meditation. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333930474_Efficacy_...
Also panic attacks can mess up your heart rate quite a bit.
And they totally didn’t authorize a residential high rise building with foundation on sand that started to lean... oh wait https://www.sfgate.com/news/editorspicks/article/SF-s-sinkin...
