Many years ago now I did some "environmental health" research for an oil major with some folks in the vicinity of it's large sour gas plant. HO swore it was that giving her fybromyalgia, but one thing we found was the grading of their land was from the barn downhill towards the house, cow-pie surface water run off went down the foundation, the inside of the basement was damp and their sump pump for weeping tile drainage didn't work reliably. They ended up over years with a huge amount of organic gunk under their basement slab, off gassing into the house. The air sampling gear we used was called Summa canisters - passivated stainless steel spheres that were expressed back to the lab and analyzed using cryogenic traps and GC/ Mass Spectrometer. We were measuring stuff down to ppb (parts per billion) easily and I could tell the day a FedEx driver had shown up wearing cologne! Actually quite amazing. Point is, analysis methods exist now, just throw money. Fixing or avoiding exposure not so easy unfortunately given the chemical soup we all live in these days.
About fuel, have you tried Aspen - it's a ready mix alkylate fuel that has no aromatics and is supposed to burn much more cleanly (different refinery stream/unit containing no aromatics like benzene, toluene etc). Or electric saws like the T530 Li? Electric blowers? Getting away from two strokes is a not bad thing in my books, just for noise exposure, exhaust and having gas and oil hanging around in the garage, shop or vehicle with us (i.e. when I stick the lawn mower in the back of the Runner for work at the church I can smell the gas when I get into the truck next morning, even if overnight is cool).
Cheers all and wishing everyone a safe and prosperous New Year.
Sometimes we all feel, well, just so processed . . . .
