I recently made my own spray starch so that I wouldn't have to breathe the chemical laden stuff. I used GMO free cornstarch mixed into a bottle of water and it worked great.

I hadn't used it for awhile but pulled it out 2 days ago to iron some shirts. I noticed an odd smell while I was ironing but didn't think much about it. The spray bottle was also leaking, so that my hands kept getting wet from the starch, but I thought it was fine because it was my homemade "safe" stuff.

After I finished, my husband commented on a strange smell in the house. We hunted all over the place trying to find it but didn't figure it out. At that point I didn't make a connection between the smell and the spray starch.

Within a half hour after I was done ironing, I started to have stomach symptoms (lots of gurgling and belching). By bedtime I was itching all over and laid awake for hours with insomnia, abdominal pain, and nausea.

By the next morning I was having diarrhea and it was only then that I remembered the weird smell I noticed while ironing. I pulled out the bottle of spray starch. opened it up, and took a whiff. It smelled really sour-like the smell when I forget to take wet clothes out of the washer for several hot days in a row.

My stomach is still so upset (mostly painful bloating now) that I can't eat anything without pain-and the only thing I had been able to eat previous to this was white rice and plain milk. Even those 2 foods made my stomach hurt all day. I'm too tired (and cognitively impaired) to do anything other than sit around all day and I hate it when I can't even read a book or do some hand sewing.

Could the soured spray starch have caused this most recent episode? I know that I can't eat fermented foods (I"m amine and salicylate free) and I suppose that leaving cornstarch in water in a warm room for several days would cause it to sour like a homemade sourdough starter would. Could skin contact with something like that cause a mast cell reaction? If not, I have no idea what has caused this one, because I haven't done, eaten, or touched anything else different for weeks.

I had been feeling  a bit better lately and am feeling really discouraged this evening.

Edited to add: I did a bit of research and learned that wet cornstarch is the perfect medium for growing bacteria and fungi. I'm pretty sure I dosed myself with a lot of it-both from breathing what was sprayed as well as the bottle dripping it all over my hands. Sigh. So tired of being sensitive to everything (well, almost everything).