[ELI5] Why can we gain resistances to medicine, alcohol, poison, etc. but not so much for allergies or pollutants?
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It varies according to the thing you are exposed to for example ethyl alcohol is an organic chemical compound meaning it is carbon based, part of the branch of chemistry that describes living things. Ethyl alcohol is created by certain bacteria living in your stomach and some amount passes into your blood stream naturally.
Many industrial pollutants are not organic compounds and are instead composed of heavy metal compounds. These compounds have a tendency to interact with the body in much more permanent way. Often when compounds like these get into the body there isn’t any way for the body to move them across the various membranes to be expelled as waste. This build up means the body cannot become more efficient at expelling the whatever.
So yeah, the more natural a thing is to your body the more you’ll be able to develop a resistance to it.
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