How the Environment Can Cause Anxiety & Panic Attacks

Our bodies absorb more than that which we swallow. We take in the whole of our environment through our senses—smells, sound waves, light waves, sensations of heat and cold. As such, things like chemicals in the environment, the way we light our lives, and ambient temperature can affect our body’s functioning.

Toxin Exposure:

Jack, a 52-year-old housepainter, suffers from “brain fog,” fatigue, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, numbness, stomachaches, and leg cramps. Years of toxic fumes from paint chemicals have taken their toll: Jack is chemically sensitive, a syndrome called MCS (multiple chemical sensitivity).

Sniff around you—if you dare. Over 150 different chemicals pervade the air in our perfumes, make-up, clothing (especially when dry-cleaned), food, carpets, paint and the air that comes through our heating and air conditioning ducts.

And that’s just a start of the toxins invading our lungs. Even small levels of toxic elements in our bloodstream can upset brain chemistry, and in some cases, although it’s rare, trigger panic or anxiety:

Mercury: Inhaling mercury vapors from industrial settings, mercury-tainted food or water (remember the ban against canned tuna fish from Japan several years ago) or from the use of mercury-based products such as skin creams, laxatives, and douches can cause mercury poisoning. Xenophobia (an abnormal fear of strangers) is one symptom, along with anxiety, depression, mood swings, and severe irritability.

Bismuth: A major ingredient in skin-lightening creams, and popular stomach medications made in Europe and Australia, bismuth toxicity begins with anxiety symptoms, apathy, depression and delusions. If the condition progresses, it leads to terrifying hallucinations, fluctuating states of consciousness, and language reduced to babbling.

Carbon Dioxide: Inhaling carbon dioxide could induce anxiety symptoms, sometimes even in subjects with no history of panic disorder.

Volatile substances: Volatile hydrocarbons, such as those found in glue, paint, gasoline, and nitrous oxide, can cause anxiety, panic, depression, personality changes, and other psychiatric symptoms and in high doses disorientation, confusion and coma. At special risk are those exposed daily to inhalation of volatile fumes—painters, refinery workers, and members of airport crews who refuel aircraft, for instance—as well as people who sniff glue, gasoline, nitrous oxide, and other agents to get high.

Insecticides: Bug-killing chemicals containing organophosphates block the production of an essential brain enzyme. Anxiety, irritability, depression, restlessness, drowsiness, and decreased memory and attention span can result.

Over Lighting our Lives:

Did you ever feel wiped out after working all day under fluorescent lights? If so, it’s not surprising. Fluorescent lights flicker and this can be annoying. The effort of trying to tune it out can exhaust you.

If you’re fear-prone, little annoyances like this grate that much more on your nerves, escalating your anxiety level.

Agoraphobic patients are often light defensive and avoid well-lit places. When forced to be in a bright environment like a mall or a market, their uneasiness about being out in public escalates, compelling them to leave.

We’re Having a Heat Wave:

Do you get more hot-tempered in the heat, and especially when it’s hot and humid? Many people do. Assaults and murders rise in summer, as does wife beating. Suicide rates peak in May and June.

Weather affects our state of mind. Many people feel a drop in spirit in October, as the days become shorter, and remain in a slump until spring, when things begin to light up again. This condition is called SAD, or seasonal affective disorder, and is brought about by the decrease in sunlight.

Psychiatrist Thomas Wehr, chief of psychobiology at the National Institute of Mental Health, has found that the opposite happens as well. Some people get depressed in the hot, muggy summer months, and endure spells of anxiety, including panic attacks.

The culprit? Again the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that helps your body adjust to outside conditions, including both light and temperature.