What is Dicke Luft about?
Dicke Luft tells our personal story of illness, despair, the search for causes, and the question of what role indoor air and air pollutants might play in health, thinking, and behavior. The book combines narrative, observation, and scientific interpretation.
Is the book a medical guide?
No. Dicke Luft is explicitly not a medical guide and not a technical study either, but a personal search for clues.
Who is the book intended for?
For readers who are interested in health, the environment, indoor spaces, air quality, and unexplained symptoms, but also for people who want to read an intense, personal life story. The book also points out that some passages can be emotionally distressing.
Do you need to be interested in medicine or science to understand the book?
No. The scientific sections are embedded in such a way that they provide orientation and are meant to make connections easier to understand, without requiring prior specialist knowledge.
Do you need to be interested in medicine or science to understand the book?
No. The scientific sections are embedded in such a way that they provide orientation and are meant to make connections easier to understand, without requiring prior specialist knowledge.
Does the book claim that all the illnesses described were clearly caused by indoor air?
No. The book frames the story as a personal search and makes it clear that the effects described cannot necessarily be clearly attributed to individual substances. That is why the broader term air pollutants is often deliberately used.
What does “Day Zero” mean?
Day Zero refers to the turning point at which the situation for us became almost fatal, and after which an entirely new perspective on the possible causes of our problems opened up.
Is the book more hopeful or more bleak?
Both. It describes a long, difficult path and distressing experiences, but it explicitly does not want to be hopeless. The book emphasizes that the observations after Day Zero give reason for hope.
Why do scientific passages play such a major role in the book?
Because we inserted them afterward in order to make visible possible connections that we ourselves did not yet understand at the time.
Is the book only about CO₂?
No. CO₂ is only one part of the topic. The book also describes VOCs, formaldehyde, nitrogen dioxide, radon, and other possible burdens in indoor spaces.
Why is the book called Dicke Luft?
Because the title is ambiguous: it refers both to tense interpersonal atmosphere and to actually polluted air. This very connection between atmosphere, health, and space is central to the book.
Why should I read the book if I do not have any symptoms myself?
Because it opens a new perspective on something ordinary that almost everyone takes for granted: the air we inhale every day in large quantities. The book invites readers to look at indoor spaces, health, and everyday complaints in a new way.
What prompted you to write this book?
The trigger was the experience that our long search for explanations and help led to a point at which almost everything would have been too late, and that afterward a new connection began to emerge that we had never seriously considered before.
Is the book autobiographical?
Yes. The book tells our life, our symptoms, our crises, our observations, and our path up to and after Day Zero.
How much science is in the book, and how much personal experience?
Both are closely interwoven. The personal story forms the core. The scientific passages were added to help classify what was experienced.
Is Dicke Luft about individual cases or about a larger problem?
The book makes both clear: our story was extreme in many respects, but at the same time we see in it indications of connections that could also affect others, perhaps more weakly, differently, or unnoticed for a long time.
