Abstract
Both sick house syndrome (SHS) and chemical sensitivity (CS) are ill-defined disorders in humans attributed to exposure to indoor volatile organic compounds. The upper respiratory airway has mainly three functions : intake, defense and nervous reception. It is thought that chemical materials cause development of unpleasant symptoms by poisoning or by allergic or neurological reaction. We studied the olfactory function of SHS and CS patients. However, we found no significant differences in either olfactory threshold or olfactory contrast between the patients and normal controls. These results show that patients with SHS do not have hypersensitivity to odor stimulation and may have something otherwise at work in their central pathway. Further examinations including other nervous systems are needed to resolve the correlation between sensitivity in the upper respiratory airway and symptoms of SHS patients.
