MCS & Third-Party Accommodations

For people with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), this is often our reality: 

We're told the illness isn’t real — it's just in our heads — and the law refuses to protect us.

In this episode of The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast, Professor Doron Dorfman, a disability law scholar at Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey, in the U.S., explores how:

• People with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) face discrimination because courts often dismiss fragrance-free policies as unreasonable.
• No-smoking rules and peanut-free zones could serve as examples for fragrance-free policies.
• Fragrance-free policies are truly not an administrative burden, as some argue.
• And more! 

I'd love your help. I’m running a short listener survey to understand how The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast can best serve people with MCS. 

It’s short, will help guide our next steps, and allow us to grow the podcast and create greater awareness about MCS. 

Thank you for your support! Please find the link here:

https://docs.google.com/.../1FAIpQLSeVqlO2G5OMxN.../viewform

Aaron.

#MultipleChemicalSensitivity #MCS #ChemicalIntolerance #EnvironmentalIllness #ChemicalSensitivityPodcast #DisabilityRights #FragranceFree #AccessibilityMatters #EnvironmentalJustice

Chapters

• 0:00 MCS: Still Dismissed as Psychological
• 1:40 Epilepsy, Parkinson’s, MS Once Misunderstood
• 5:32 MCS Stuck in a Dark Time
• 7:40 MCS Research "Without Us" Is Unethical
• 9:51 Introducing Third Party Accommodations
• 12:16 Why Courts Reject Fragrance-Free Policies
• 17:53 Peanut Bans vs. Fragrance Bans
• 25:38 A Legal Win for MCS Workers
• 33:19 Redefining Access Through Third Parties
• 39:34 Canada Proves Policies Can Work

Transcript

Aaron Goodman: You’re listening to the Chemical Sensitivity Podcast. I’m Aaron Goodman. If this show has helped you feel more informed or feel less alone, we’d love your input. We’re running a short listener survey to understand how we can better support the MCS community. The link is in the show notes. We really want to hear from you—and thank you for being part of it.

People with MCS—and we’re talking about millions of us—have had enough. We have an illness that’s often debilitating, and we’re frequently told it’s all in our heads. We know it takes great strength to deal with this. How much longer will we have to contend with false arguments that hold so much weight? How long will it be until science and medicine fully agree: Multiple Chemical Sensitivity is an illness rooted in the body? We know it is not a psychological condition, in spite of the fact that many healthcare practitioners—and sadly, some researchers—continue to claim it is.

This is something I’ve talked about on the podcast before: nothing about us without us. Researchers, physicians, human resource professionals, policymakers—must include people with MCS when it comes to making decisions that affect us.

I mean, can you imagine someone with epilepsy today being told by a doctor that their seizures are a form of madness, or of hysteria? Throughout the 1800s, epilepsy was treated as a psychiatric illness. Thankfully, science has taken big steps. We now know that epilepsy is a neurological condition triggered by unusual electrical activity in the brain.

How about people with Parkinson’s disease? I’ve spoken on the podcast to a leading researcher on Parkinson’s who says the illness, in large part, is created by exposures to pesticide. It used to be seen as a nervous disorder, and folks with Parkinson’s were viewed as psychologically unstable.

How sad and how familiar.

When it comes to Multiple Sclerosis, or MS, in the 1800s—even the 1900s before medical technology advanced—symptoms of MS including exhaustion, mobility challenges, and difficulty seeing were sometimes connected to hysteria or neurosis.

If you’re curious, check it out online. There are a number of other illnesses that fall into this category: physical conditions that were once mistakenly seen as psychological impairments. Without sophisticated imaging tools and biological testing to diagnose patients, many were sadly sent to psychiatrists.

Fortunately, when it comes to many illnesses, views have shifted. But unfortunately, when it comes to Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, we’re still in a relatively dark time.

On a positive note, there’s a growing body of research clearly pointing to the physiological nature of the illness. But it’s distressing, isn’t it, to see new papers published by people with fairly large platforms saying things we know are not true? Most of the time, I find folks like this have their minds made up before they even write their papers. They choose sources that fit their arguments. They ignore research that counters their false claims. To me, that’s unethical.

What’s worse, and more damaging, is many researchers like this don’t involve people with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. It would be unthinkable for me to write a paper about an illness and not even attempt to talk with folks whose lives are impacted by it. My hope is those kinds of researchers wake up and see the harm they cause.

We live in a time where interdisciplinary research is flourishing. Researchers have opportunities to collaborate and share ideas, to seek knowledge from scholars in fields they don’t necessarily specialize in. My hope is that the persistent exclusion of people with MCS in some research fuels better, more ethical studies among scholars who want to engage with our community—to give us opportunities to share our lived experiences and allow this knowledge to impact their findings.

We’re not alone. Folks with conditions like Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Long COVID, Lyme Disease, among others, are too often left out of research and told their symptoms are either psychological or psychiatric in nature. Many of us have heard from doctors that we “have anxiety,” and behind our backs they may use the word hysteria to describe us. But we know: when an illness affects many systems of the body, evolves, or when doctors don’t have ways to effectively measure symptoms, people can be told they have a psychological condition.

There have been positive changes. Fibromyalgia was once referred to as psychogenic rheumatism, among other names. In the 1980s and 90s, however, researchers began to acknowledge the physical roots of the illness, alongside psychological factors.

MCS was first defined by Dr. Theron Randolph—known as the founder of Clinical Ecology—in the 1950s. At the time, his work on environmental sensitivities was widely dismissed by the medical profession. Allergists couldn’t use standard tests to diagnose MCS like they used for food allergies or hay fever. Since then, skeptics have insisted MCS reflects psychological instability, or that it could be psychosomatic—in other words, amplified by mental or emotional issues.

That’s getting old. We deserve better.

Frankly, those who continue to put out these claims need to do their homework. Talk to people with MCS. Look at the growing body of scholarship. And listen—just listen.

You’re listening to the Chemical Sensitivity Podcast. I’m Aaron Goodman. I’m a journalist, documentary maker, and researcher—but I’m also someone who’s lived with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, or MCS, for years. MCS—also called chemical intolerance, Toxicant-Induced Loss of Tolerance (TILT), or Idiopathic Environmental Illness—affects millions around the world. It’s a condition that makes everyday life extremely challenging and unpredictable.

Fragrance, air fresheners, fresh paint, scented laundry products on someone’s clothing, and more can trigger exhaustion, brain fog, muscle pain, rashes, and a wide range of symptoms. And yet, for all its impacts, MCS remains largely invisible. Doctors mostly dismiss it. Employers rarely accommodate it. Even friends and family struggle to understand.

This podcast aims to change that. We dive into the latest research, share real stories, and explore how people navigate life with an illness many refuse to see.

In this episode, I’m speaking with Professor Doron Dorfman. Doron is a professor of law at Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey, in the United States. He has expertise in disability, health, and employment law.

In his research, Doron explores how people with disabilities are negatively impacted, and often discriminated against, by laws and policies that affect their rights and access to healthcare.

I invited Doron to speak on the podcast about his fascinating 2025 paper titled Third Party Accommodations. It’s a term he coined to explore how people—including those with MCS and chemical intolerance—depend on others, i.e., third parties, to alter their behaviour in order to work and live without getting ill.

Doron discusses why many people with MCS currently do not get the accommodations we need, how no-smoking rules and peanut-free zones could serve as examples for fragrance-free policies, how fragrance-free policies are not the administrative burden some institutions claim, whether fragrance policies impinge on the rights of others who insist on wearing fragrance, and much more.

00:09:51] Aaron Goodman: Thank you so much for joining me. Great to see you.

Doron Dorfman: Thank you so much for having me on.

[00:09:58] Aaron Goodman: I know listeners are going to be really fascinated by your work as much as I am, and they probably have the same question that I do: why do you have a particular focus on disability accommodations for people with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity? Not a lot of legal scholars do. Why this topic?

[00:10:15] Doron Dorfman: I’ll tell you about when I started writing this paper, Third Party Accommodations. I was interested in situations where accommodations require third parties—other people—to change their behavior in order to accommodate a person with a disability. The definition of disability changes over time, and as our lives evolve, we find, unfortunately, more diseases and impairments joining the ranks of disability.

When the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted, there was a proposal for a list of covered disabilities. The disability community rejected that—they wanted a broader standard that could adapt to new conditions. I think MCS or environmental illnesses are one of those newer disabilities that move in and out of courts and into our lives. That’s why I wanted to explore it. There isn’t a lot of research on MCS in the legal landscape, and it fit my idea of how other people need to change their behaviors in order to accommodate a person with that type of impairment.

[00:11:11] Aaron Goodman: With the U.S., we hear more and more about MCS because more people are developing it. And it sounds like the law needs to catch up.

[00:11:21] Doron Dorfman: Exactly. The law often tries to catch up with new technologies and new impairments. MCS is related to the environment, pollution, and environmental causes. It’s growing, and the law needs to be sharper in recognizing it.

[00:11:54] Aaron Goodman: In the U.S., there’s this concept of “reasonable accommodation.” Walk us through that and why it doesn’t work well for MCS.

[00:12:16] Doron Dorfman: Historically, there was contention about whether MCS was a disability under the ADA. That’s less of an issue now—most courts do recognize it. The bigger barrier is with reasonable accommodations.

“Reasonable accommodation” is a broad category—it can be physical adjustments like an ergonomic chair, or policy modifications like flexible scheduling. It applies to workplaces, public accommodations like theaters and restaurants, and housing. The ADA’s goal is participation in all areas of life.

The key issue is the term “reasonable.” Courts often see fragrance-free policies—one of the main accommodations for MCS—as unreasonable because they require third parties (coworkers, customers) to change behavior. Courts worry this creates an “undue hardship” on employers or entities. That’s where many MCS claims fail.

[00:17:53] Aaron Goodman: You write about parallels with food allergies, like peanut bans.

Doron Dorfman: Exactly. Peanut allergies are a classic example of third-party accommodations. People are told not to bring peanuts into schools or workplaces. Some peanut allergies are airborne, just like fragrance sensitivities. Courts generally accept peanut bans as reasonable. But with MCS, courts are less supportive.

[00:19:42] Aaron Goodman: Another example you mention is cigarette smoke.

Doron Dorfman: Yes. In the 1990s, after the ADA was enacted, many disabilities weren’t recognized by courts. But people with respiratory disabilities sensitive to cigarette smoke were accommodated. Why? Because society was already shifting against smoking—there were strong campaigns about secondhand smoke. That recognition trickled down into the courts.

I hope that as science develops—maybe with biomarkers or genetic tests for MCS—we’ll see a similar cultural shift that leads to stronger legal recognition.

[00:21:23] Aaron Goodman: Until then, MCS remains a “contested” illness.

Doron Dorfman: Yes, it’s seen as contentious, like fibromyalgia once was. Courts often operate with a “fear of con”—a suspicion that people are faking disabilities to gain advantage. Sadly, MCS is often caught in that skepticism.

[00:21:56] Aaron Goodman: You’ve also written about how courts view inconsistencies. Like someone with MCS who has cats.

Doron Dorfman: Exactly. Courts sometimes point to inconsistencies to question legitimacy: “If you’re sensitive to fragrances, how can you tolerate pets?” But disability is fluid. Symptoms can change day to day, and people can tolerate some triggers but not others. That nuance is often lost in legal reasoning.

[00:25:38] Aaron Goodman: But there’s also good news, right? You mention the Barry v. California Department of Transportation case.

Doron Dorfman: Yes. That case recognized that fragrance-free policies can be workable and do not create undue hardship. The employee was even made “chemical liaison,” approving cleaning products in the workplace. That’s an example of a court acknowledging MCS as legitimate.

[00:27:17] Aaron Goodman: Let’s talk about laundry products. For many of us, scented detergents and dryer sheets are the biggest triggers. They turn people into “walking emitters.” But asking people to change their laundry products feels impossible.

[00:28:17] Doron Dorfman: It’s challenging, yes. But consider this: many parents already use fragrance-free detergents for baby clothes. So it is culturally possible. And regulations are emerging, like New York’s ban on certain harmful ingredients in laundry products. But you’re right: regulating laundry may feel like an infringement on personal freedom.

That’s why remote work is so important. Work-from-home accommodations expanded during COVID-19, and for many with MCS it’s the only safe option. But remote work can also be isolating and limit career advancement. Ideally, it should be one option among many—not the only solution.

[00:30:35] Aaron Goodman: What about recognition by global bodies like the World Health Organization? Could that help U.S. courts?

[00:31:17] Doron Dorfman: Honestly, less than we might hope. U.S. courts are not strongly swayed by international recognition. Cultural change within the U.S. is more influential. Look at smoking bans or peanut-free schools—they gained traction through advocacy and public support before courts followed.

[00:33:10] Aaron Goodman: You coined the term “third party accommodations.” Can you explain that?

[00:33:19] Doron Dorfman: Yes. Traditional accommodations are seen as between the disabled person and the covered entity (employer, landlord, etc.). But with MCS, accommodations often require others—coworkers, classmates, customers—to modify behavior. That’s a third-party accommodation.

There are precedents: peanut bans, mask mandates during COVID, and smoking bans. My work shows that courts already recognize some third-party accommodations as reasonable. MCS should be treated the same way.

[00:38:01] Aaron Goodman: Interdependence is another concept you write about.

[00:38:06] Doron Dorfman: Interdependence recognizes that everyone relies on others. Parents rely on childcare, caregivers rely on support, and so on. Disability justice emphasizes this universal interdependence to show that accommodations are not extraordinary—they’re part of human life.

[00:39:04] Aaron Goodman: For me, interdependence is also ecological. Toxic laundry chemicals go into water systems, pesticides harm birds and fish. We’re all connected.

Doron Dorfman: Exactly. And that broader view can help people see MCS not as an individual burden, but as part of a shared responsibility.

[00:39:34] Aaron Goodman: Last question: are there countries where courts are more supportive of people with MCS?

[00:40:33] Doron Dorfman: I don’t do international law research, but Canada is often cited as more progressive. The Canadian Human Rights Charter recognizes MCS. When U.S. courts say fragrance-free policies are “unworkable,” Canada shows they are possible. That comparative example can be persuasive.

[00:40:59] Aaron Goodman: Thank you so much, Doron. This concept of third-party accommodations is fascinating, and I think listeners will take a lot from it.

[00:41:07] Doron Dorfman: Thank you so much.

Aaron Goodman: You’ve been listening to the Chemical Sensitivity Podcast. I’m the host and podcast creator, Aaron Goodman.

Please take a moment to complete our listener survey—it’s short, and it’s a chance to help shape resources for the MCS community. The link is in the show notes.

As always, you can reach me at aaron@chemicalsensitivitypodcast.org.

The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast is by and for the MCS community. The podcast is generously supported by the Marilyn Brockman Hoffman Foundation and listeners like you. If you wish to support the podcast, please visit chemicalsensitivitypodcast.org. Your support will help us continue making the podcast available and creating greater awareness about MCS.

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Thanks so much for listening.

The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast and associated website are the work of Aaron Goodman and made possible with funds from the Marilyn Brockman Hoffman Foundation, supporting efforts to educate and inform physicians, scientists, and the public about Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. The content, opinions, findings, statements, and recommendations expressed in this podcast and associated website do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of its sponsors.