Air quality dispute

By catherine

So our landlord currently lives below us in a split two story house and he’s in the midst of doing all these repairs so he can get it on the market as soon as possible.  Yesterday, he lacquered the wooden floors with some sort of chemical that filled the entire house with fumes.  It is currently winter in Nebraska so he decided not to open the windows so the fumes had nowhere to go.  We got home late in the evening (around 7pm) and immediately noticed the smell when we entered our house.  We tried to go about our normal business and cook dinner, but the fumes were just too strong and both of us developed a strong headache and were feeling nauseous.  I actually threw up after dinner because of it and by 8:30 we left our house to stay with a friend because the fumes were just too bad.  This morning we came back to get our stuff for work and my boyfriend went to talk to our landlord.  The landlord claimed he "didn’t realize" that the fumes would make it up to our apartment and that he also woke up with a headache this morning (imagine that).  However, he said he still had one more room he had to lacquer the floors and apparently even though my boyfriend told him we couldn’t sleep there last night and I got sick from it, the landlord said he was going to lacquer the last part of the floors today.  I’m so upset about this because not only is it incredibly inconvenient for us, but it’s also a health risk.  What are my options?  I mean, we’re lucky we had a friend that could take us in at 8:30 at night last night, but what if the same thing happens today?  Can I tell him that he has to pay for us to stay somewhere else?  Or that I’m going to deduct two days out of next month’s rent?  Is there any way he can actually get in trouble for this?  Please let me know if there is somewhere else I should seek advice.  Thank you.

Related posts:

Holy Cow, we couldn't find any other related post. Sorry. :(