Environmental Illness

To the Editor.— Black et al1draw the wrong conclusions in reporting on psychological profiles of patients with EI. It is not surprising that individuals who have stopped working (69%) or have been hospitalized (50%) because of illness show a higher prevalence of mood, anxiety, or somatoform disorders than healthy controls. The most important statistic in their report is this: if the three psychiatric clinic patients are excluded, 40% of patients with EI showed no significant psychopathology, past or present. This finding contradicts their notion that EI is basically a psychiatric illness in disguise.2 In conducting a study comparing patients with EI and patients with somatic complaints who denied sensitivity to environmental chemicals,3I had to discard 68% of potential control patients because a thorough history revealed that these patients experienced ill effects from ordinary exposures to solvents, automobile exhaust, and other volatile materials. Adverse reactions to