Chemicals can cause seizures

---

HealthWiki > Epilepsy and Seizures > Chapter 3: Types of seizures and how to identify them > Chemicals can cause seizures

---

In this chapter:

 

In this chapter:

• Chapter 3: Types of seizures and how to identify them
• There are many types of seizures
• Identifying types of seizures
• Absence seizures
• When seizures are an emergency
• Seizures during sleep
• Seizures during childhood
• Health conditions that can cause seizures
• Seizures from alcohol and drug use
• Chemicals can cause seizures
• Seizures with psychological causes

Some chemicals that get into the body affect the brain and nervous system. They may be breathed into the lungs, absorbed into the skin or eyes, or in food you eat or water you drink. Among the many health problems they can cause are seizures. Although these may look like epileptic seizures, unlike seizures caused by epilepsy, these seizures usually stop after the person stops being exposed to the chemicals.

Chemicals that can cause seizures are ingredients in some solvents, paints or coatings, agricultural chemicals, and cleaning products, and include heavy metals such as lead or mercury. For some people with epilepsy, exposure to chemicals is a seizure trigger. Long-term exposure to chemicals—for instance, to pesticides in agricultural areas—increases a person’s risk of epilepsy.

Do not bring chemicals on your clothing home to make your family sick.

The best way not to be affected by a harmful chemical is not to use it, and to use a safer chemical (or no chemicals) instead. If you must work with chemicals that may be harmful, try to follow the instructions that explain how to use them safely: outdoors or with good ventilation, pouring or mixing carefully, limiting the amount of time you use them, wearing necessary protective equipment (gloves, masks or respirators, long sleeves, boots, etc.), and cleaning up afterwards. Clean yourself, your equipment, your clothing, and your body—especially washing hands and face before eating or drinking.

If you use chemicals in your workplace, your employer should provide you and your coworkers with information about how to work safely and the conditions that make safety possible: training, good ventilation, protective gear, and a place to wash up. For agricultural workers who live near their fields, it can be more difficult to keep the chemicals sprayed on crops out of the air you and your family breathe, the water you drink, and out of your homes.

For information about how to protect workers from chemicals that could cause seizures, see Chapter 8 of Hesperian’s Workers’ Guide to Health and Safety. To learn about how to protect people in agricultural areas from chemicals that could cause seizures, see Chapter 14 of Hesperian’s A Community Guide to Environmental Health.

This page was updated:19 May 2026