Ill Effects from Offensive Scents
Friday December 5, 2003
Reader Responses - My recent blog entry about a Perfume Attack along with a link to a previous article I wrote entitled Are Scents Making You Sick? has created some feedback.
Here is a sampling of emails that I received about this topic:
I thought I was going nuts!
Thanks so much!! Your Perfume comment was great! This is a terrible problem for me. I have the same experience when I run into strong perfume. I just don't know what to say to the people to give them a "clue". I carry a nose inhaler all the time now to try and open my sinuses after they have been attacked by perfume. Some are worse than others. I thought I was going nuts! until I read your comments.
Tom
Insensitive Health Care Providers
Thank you so much for this article. I have asthma and COPD. Last year I had a heart attack and heart bypass surgery, even after telling everyone I could at the hospital, while I was IN the hospital I was exposed to perfume, cologne and cleaning smells. I had attack after attack. This year I had knee surgery and gastric bypass surgery at a different hospital and the same problem. The LAST place and time I should have to worry about exposure to scents is while I'm on a ventilator in the hospital. The doctors, nurses and anyone else that works there should know better!! Out in public I can get up and leave, but there I can't!
Sue
Assault Not Only on the Nose
I've been reading all the related columns and articles on Scents and Sensitivity, Chemical Sensitivity, etc. I notice a persistent tendency on your part to write as though the chemical assault by perfumes, fragrances, etc. is on the NOSE. It is not, it is an assault on the BRAIN and the CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM. This is why people react with neurological symptoms,including headache, fatigue, dizziness, irritability, foggy thinking as wellas with asthma and other allergic reactions. They don't just get a runny nose.
An appreciative sniffer can be very sensitive - for instance the "nose" who works as a perfumer or tasting wine or a food critic sampling and characterizing cheeses, teas, or coffee. These people have a sharper and more discriminating sense of smell and may have as many as 100 more papillary glands on the tongue than the average person. There is no necessary connection between this type of sensitivity and chemical sensitivity - where a person has had a serious exposure and subsequent intolerance to chemicals in general, including fragrances. The Epstein-Barr virus makes mucous membranes too permeable, so the chemicals one is exposedto, both subliminally and overtly as with perfumes, enter the body, the bloodstream, the skin, the interior tissues, the brain, and the nerves much more profoundly than in the case of a healthy person with less permeable membranes and a stronger blood-brain barrier.
When a chemically sensitive person - whatever the cause of his or her sensitivity - experiences chemical assault, it is not the more innocuous meaning we think of as our average sense of smell. It is a more thorough and penetrating entry of the offending substance in the body and cells of the individual. It may seem to be an unusually sharp sense of smell. The person's sense of smell as well as other irritating sensations may be quite heightened because he is feeling the experience of actually ingesting this substance, not merely "smelling" it. The chemical sensitivity or allergic reaction is not due to having a highly discriminating and perceptive sense of smell. It is due to (a) the person's own allergy, illness, virus, or reactivity, (b) the person's previous subjection to a high-dose chemical exposure with resulting sensitivity, or (c) the person's repeated exposure to many low-dose chemical assaults over time, as with frequent contact with smoke, perfume, paints, solvents, household cleaners, dry cleaning, chemically treated synthetic rugs and fabrics, chemical and metal contamination from dentistry or bad plumbing, that gradually leads to fragrance-triggered symptoms such as asthma, hives, headache, etc.
Madolin Wells
Perfumes Grandma Wore Were Less Toxic
As to perfumes that seem offensive. I seem to think there is a difference in the perfumes that my grandmother wore, the perfumes that I'm used to wearing from the '70's and the perfumes that they are creating now. I can say that the scents in the toiletries at Bath and Body works are the worst culprits. And that is a vote from my whole family. There are also certain stores that I have visited that like the store to smell nice. At first it was o.k. but it has become so nauseating that I can barely go there any more. And if I smell it somewhere else I am repulsed. I find the candle scents are in the same legue. And I remember as a little girl candles smelling good. The same as cleaners and room sprays. And I don't think I have an overly sensitive nose. More of a normal sence of smell. I really think it is something that has changed in the manufacturing of these new products. I still us the perfumes I used in the '70's , and they don't bother me at all or anyone in the house. They are subtle. For close incounteres. The way they were meant to be..... forum post by Ingaborg
Previous responses regarding this subject
More Reader Mail
I was recently hospitalized for a cardiac arrythmia, and while in CCU, I was bombarded with perfumes worn by the nurses and staff.
marilyn aka blissfulbeader
I complained….rather loudly into the ear of the president of the hospital and suggested that they make the hospital a fragrance-free zone. Many other hospitals have done it.
He told me it was difficult to implement such a plan, and more difficult to enforce it. I said ‘it’s only as difficult as you let it be. If you make strict rules with penalties, you will have cooperation from the staff.’
I volunteered to look into it and find out how other hospitals have managed to do it, and how successfully or not.
I am hoping to start the ball rolling in the right direction before I have to be hospitalized again…and suffer the asthma attacks and migraines ON TOP OF the ailment for which I was admitted.
If anyone would like to offer me information that I can pass along, please email me through my forum profile.
Thanks