Something Is Really Wrong With This Picture
There’s a global proliferation of artificial fragrance and methods of dispersing it. Fragrance concoctions are added to almost everything imaginable (with more ridiculous ideas emerging all the time). They are sold and used everywhere at the same time as more people are developing adverse health effects from them, effects like serious allergies, disabling “sensitivities”, migraines, asthma, neurological disorders, lowered IQ, birth defects, etc. (the list keeps growing).
These health problems are due to unregulated and secret ingredients, ingredients which pollute our bodies, our air, and the waterways they get washed into from our sinks, tubs, and showers, ingredients that are impossible to avoid now, even when we don’t want them in our lives.
If you or your child had celiac disease or a severe peanut allergy, it would be the same as the peanut and gluten industries adding peanuts and gluten or peanut and gluten mist along with doses of mood altering drugs to every product imaginable, including building materials. That would be in addition to having peanut and gluten essences worn by everyone (in their hair, armpits, clothing …), pumped out of air ducts, automated devices in public washrooms, transportation, stores, apartments, offices, hotels, even medical offices, and your neighbours burning peanuts and gluten in their fireplaces, washing with laundry with them, and then pumping the residues out of their dryer vents 24/7.
You could imagine cat allergies too, but they are usually more inconvenient than life threatening and disabling.
The fragrance industry is very aware of the adverse effects its products have on people and the environment, yet they continue to look for more ways to pollute us and every product and environment conceivably possible. They knowingly create concoctions that harm and act like drugs! Yet they consider these risks reasonable and acceptable, and choose to dismiss or ridicule those who have problems, using similar tactics the tobacco industry used to deny there are problems and to continue to profit from them.
Are Fragrances Drugs By Design?
They hide behind lax regulations that they lobby to create, indeed they have remained a self-regulated industry, able to keep their ingredients secret from us, except for a voluntarily disclosed list of over 3000 ingredients. Who knows how many were not disclosed? Some of the ones listed are able to cause very alarming health problems, as they include known endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, and other toxic waste!
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It’s a huge violation of human rights for people with environmental “sensitivities” and other health conditions that are immediately (and painfully) exacerbated by unwanted and unavoidable exposures to fragrance ingredients, (the long lists of adverse long term effects are still emerging). Some of the effects can take weeks to recover from.
It’s also a violation of decency and trust to knowingly promote products that cause harm to so many, and it’s possibly even criminal under the circumstances, considering the serious consequences of emerging effects, the increasing barriers to safe access, even for food, the suffering being inflicted on so many, all from completely unnecessarily allergenic and toxic products.
How is this different from terrorism?
To profit from knowingly polluting people and the planet we depend on for life is not good business, it’s despicable! And it should be a criminal offense!
“Perfume is a $6.1 billion industry in the U.S. and $29 billion worldwide. Add to that the billions more spent to create other fragrances used in soaps, lotions, deodorants, detergents and other household products.”
Some of us are housebound and can’t even find safe food that hasn’t passed through fragranced environments, thereby contaminating it all (just like smoke moves and creates 2nd and 3rd hand problems, fragrances contaminate in the same ways).
Trying to get disability related “accommodation” one place at a time, when everyone everywhere has been manipulated into using these products, believing them to be safe, harmless, or even beneficial (!) is something few people have the energy to fight for.
Yet, clean air (and water) would benefit everyone’s health! Not just those of us who are immediately affected by these unnecessary substances.
Any thoughts on how we can deal with this problem?
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See these (and other) posts for more details:
Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals Are Costly to ALL of Society
New MCS/ES Accommodation Resource
Be Fragrance-Free, Especially for the Children
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Can you imagine a world where it’s unacceptable to profit from polluting people and the environment we all depend on for life?
What will it take?
Seriously "Sensitive" to Pollution 
Excellent article. We need to keep doing exactly what you are doing. Spread the word. When governments and individual people start to realize the financial, physical, emotional, costs this is having on the population worldwide — change will happen. It is already happening — more and more I am reading articles from mainstream sources that are questioning the toxic chemical assaults on the entire planet so that companies can make money and humans can imagine they smell “nice”.
I’m getting a bit impatient… seeing so much preventable suffering out there… and the current way of seeing it (the corporate controlled government way) is that it’s all good for the economy. Make them sick? No problem, the health “care” sector becomes more profitable…
I read that 70% of the American population takes at least one prescription med a day!!! That is so wrong! And 2 out of 3 people are expected to get cancer! Yes, there are some treatments extending life, but quality of life goes down in spades…
The fragrance industry is just one part of this toxic economy, but it’s also a big part of it. And from a life standpoint, a very unnecessary part.
Clean air and water are necessary. Toxic fragrances are not.
There has to be a better way! And if humans created this way, we can create a better way too!
WOW!!!! You said it true. When I went to be officially diagnosed with MCS (after I had it for two decades) — the doctor just kept repeating he couldn’t believe I didn’t take any meds at my age. He also commented I’m classic MCS — very healthy except for reacting to toxic chemicals around me. I dream of the day I can breathe clean air and be my full vibrant self.
I dream of that day for us all!
Yes I can ‘imagine’, it’s been promised to the faithfull… ♡♡♡
If the kingdom of God is within, then we’d better be taking better care of this kingdom.
Pope Francis’s Radical Environmentalism
Exploiting the earth “is our sin,” the pontiff says.
“As part of the Franciscan tradition we emphasize ‘thisness,’ the unique specialness of each particular living and nonliving thing, which is loved individually and particularly by God. Every tree every pond, every member of every species is unique and special to God.”
“Creation is not a property, which we can rule over at will; or, even less, is the property of only a few: Creation is a gift, it is a wonderful gift that God has given us, so that we care for it and we use it for the benefit of all, always with great respect and gratitude.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/pope-franciss-radical-rethinking-of-environmentalism/374300/
AMEN ♡♡♡
I get the feeling you are feeling defeated, that we will never see a man-made-chemical-free environment here on earth unless we die and go to a better place somewhere else. I respect your views and faith. But, I am all for trying my best right now to help educate as many as possible and join activist groups getting results even if only one rung at a time on a tall ladder, at least we may help clean up this beautiful earth so that our children’s children may have a better chance to enjoy what ‘God’ has intended us to enjoy right here now, why else would he have created it! Sending smiles and good wishes <3
The more we speak up, the more things change. I have friends that will educate people before I have a chance to open my mouth. The message is getting out there. We just need to make sure the message doesn’t die.
Your blog does a good job of educating and keeping the message alive.
So wonderful to have friends like that!
I think once people understand what is happening, they are very relieved to get these poisons out of their lives!
They are relieved and sometimes surprised to find that their health was being affected by them.
It’s a wonder how more people aren’t willing to be so pleasantly surprised!
All I can say is I’m one of those who are reacting to so many things I really sometimes feel like ending my life, it has become so bad. No MD I’ve spoken to yet understands or maybe does not want to get into, my sensitivities and the reason I’m like I am. We are all responsible for this good earth and here, we’ve gone and ruined it. What will happen next? I am active in speaking out whenever and wherever possible, we need to get together more to help solve this growing problem.
Agreed, it’s going to take a lot of people working together to change this toxic economy.
Hopefully you will find a doctor who can help, at least a little bit… as well as be able to live in a clean, safe, healthy environment.
So few doctors have received any training on environmental health issues, and some of what they do hear is designed to get it wrong. Maybe some of the older ones who can see the changes happening in their patients will be able to recognize that things have changed, that there is more to it, and that they will actively seek out information to help their patients instead of just reaching for the script pad and offering lotions, potions, and pills…
Our earth and our bodies will need a lot of love, care, and help recovering from this mess…
Recognition, Resolution and Respect are primary to saving life on our planet Earth that was created in perfection to nuture life not to poison it.
We can not ‘give up’ as we are living testimony of how we are being mislead and poisoned and this in itself prompts efforts of prevention through recognition. True we have been robbed, physically and mentally to greater or lesser extent, of carrying out our ‘will’ and this is most difficult to come to terms with and tends to throw us in a big black hole that’s really hard to climb out of without a beacon of hope or a ‘helping hand’ and a kind ear.
It’s very comforting and good to know that some still have the strength and mental capacities to actively educate and raise awareness. Please take good care & God bless you all ♡♡♡
Good work on getting the information out there.
You may add the Ohio Network for the Chemically Injured to your list of resources http://www.ohionetwork.org We have been a 501C3 organization since 2000. Toni Temple, ONFCI President
Thanks for the reminder, and for the work you do!
I’m fighting my apartment building now about the “air freshener” they insisted on installing. They yanked it on my floor instead of agreeing to an accommodation for my disabilities. But the elevator still brings it down from other floors.
I thought I was the only one who dreaded cleaner and candle aisles. Avoided public restrooms, won’t let the doctors touch me with purified hands until they wash them and won’t let eye clinics spray chemicals on my glasses…but then I’m just seen as a cantankerous old so-and-so.
I think those of us who have adverse health effects from fragrance chemical pollution will soon be the majority. Too many are suffering in silence, taking it personally. The more we speak up and out, the sooner we will be able to have safe, clean air to breathe!
It’s not easy, but we do have to speak up and by doing so, everyone else’s health improves too.
I wish you swift success in having your building’s air quality improved for everyone who lives there.
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