I am a 55-year old male living in the UK. Over the last 10 years or so, I have developed a hypersensitivity to a few artificial fragrances, most commonly the fragrances that are now frequently added to household washing detergents. (Unfortunately, due to lax EU and UK law, I cannot precisely ascertain which chemicals I have a bad reaction to.)
My symptoms are increasing headaches and brain fog. Within ten minutes, I struggle to articulate simple sentences, and I’m pretty sure that I would be seriously ill within an hour. When I remove the fragrances from my environment, my headaches gradually dissipate over a few hours.

As a consequence, I find crowded spaces very difficult – trains and buses are troublesome, planes and theatres are almost impossible for me. This is a major life-limiting problem for me.

Why am I telling you this? My symptoms strongly suggest inflammation in the brain, excess nitric oxide, and a leaky blood-brain barrier. I have a wealth of evidence that my symptoms are relatively common, yet I have so far seen very little hard scientific study of this problem. There is some discussion of MCS (multiple chemical sensitivity) but nothing that seems to describe exactly the brain inflammation that I suffer from.

My doctors in the UK haven’t been able to help, partly because there are no outwardly visible symptoms that they can measure and quantify, but probably also because they honestly don’t know much about it either.

If any of my diagnoses above sound familiar, I’d be really grateful if you have any pointers to appropriate scientific papers.

Sorry for using up your valuable time!
Matthew