Category Archives: Fragrance

Unilever to Disclose Some (but not all) AXE and Other Fragrance Ingredients

Unilever, the company responsible for making disabling products like AXE (aka LYNX) has announced they will be expanding their product ingredient lists  to include fragrance ingredients above 0.01 percent (100 parts per million) in a product’s formulation (via the SmartLabel app, but not on the actual labels *)

Here’s what we need to know:

* 20 parts per million (ppm) is the FDA’s standard for ‘gluten-free’ *

Which means that people who are allergic or “sensitive” can suffer serious and life threatening effects from substances at well below 100 ppm, and we still won’t know what is causing the symptoms, or what we need to avoid to stay alive.

unilever-banner

This plan may help people who aren’t knowingly or immediately affected by fragrance exposures to choose their products more wisely, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough to help those of us who are disabled by or have life threatening reactions to their products.

Edited to add:

Unilever’s fragrance transparency is a major green-wash at 100 ppm, when gluten-free has to be below 20 ppm, and people with isothiazolinone (aka MI) allergy react to as little as 3 ppm, perhaps less.

Also,  long-term health limit for fumes from dry-cleaning solvents has dropped from 20 parts per billion to an infinitesimal 2 parts per billion because long-term exposure to even very low concentrations can result in cancer, as well as fetal development problems for pregnant women.

Other interesting tidbits about Unilever:

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Fragrance Chemicals: Weapons of Environmental and Human Destruction

We are surrounded by and saturated with fragrance chemicals now.

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Fragrance Chemicals:
Weapons of Destruction

(if you have been impacted, you know this is not hyperbole)

Most fragrances are now are made from oil and gas based chemicals.

They are in our personal care, laundry, and cleaning products. They are in garbage bags, candles, and shoes. They are in toys, fire-place logs, and diapers. They are in toilet paper, stationary, and stickers. They are in clothing, pillows, and jewellery. They are in foods, plastics, and medicines. They are in kitty litter, trash bags,  and vacuum cleaner bags. They are even in pesticides, where they are regulated by the EPA, but they are not regulated by anyone when they are added to all the other products we use and are exposed to!

There’s no escaping fragrance even when housebound, because so many  deliveries of even the basics like food, arrive fragrance contaminated!

We were not designed for 24/7 exposures to toxic chemicals

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How much more evidence is needed before something is done about the human and environmental health problems caused by fragranced productss?

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Here’s an info dump with some relevant links and videos:

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Fragranced Products: Risk to People and Profits

From Dr Anne Steinemann’s latest research
“Fragranced consumer products: exposures and effects from emissions”

“Basically, if it contained a fragrance, it posed problems for people” 

 

fragranced-risks

“This is a huge problem; it’s an epidemic”
says Professor Steinemann.

She is especially concerned with involuntary exposure to fragranced products, or what she calls “secondhand scents.

“Over 22% of Americans surveyed can’t go somewhere because exposure to a fragranced product would make them sick.”

“These findings have enormous implications for businesses, workplaces, care facilities, schools, homes, and other private and public places,” said Professor Steinemann. For instance, a growing number of lawsuits under the Americans with Disabilities Act concern involuntary and disabling exposure to fragranced products.”

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The Pinktober Special You Don’t Want to Miss!

At long last, here’s your chance to see STINK for FREE!

Please don’t miss this!
What you see could literally save your life!

If you want to learn more about pink ribbons and pinktober, you can get Breast Cancer Action’s  “Think Before You Pink Toolkit” here.

And for everyone’s sake:

Be fragrance (and toxic chemical stink) free. It’s good for you! It’s good for me!

http://StinkMovie.com/

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How Much Human Contact Can We Live Without?

I saw this photograph  on facebook of  Richard Gere and Roshi Joan Halifax hugging (at the Mind and Life “Power and Care” conference), which to me exemplifies the best kind of (adult to adult) hug we humans could have.

Richard Gere and Roshi Joan Halifax

Richard Gere and Roshi Joan Halifax

I haven’t been able to stop looking at it… and it made me start trying to remember when the last time I was able to hug someone was.

I don’t think it was in 2010 when I left Toronto, as I was so sick then, and I didn’t have any spare clothes to risk contaminating them with 2nd and 3rd hand fragrance chemicals. Continue reading

School Boards to Pump Peanut Fragrance Into Schools!

peanut fragrance 1

Imagine if that were to happen?

How many people have peanut allergies?

“In the U.S., approximately three million people report allergies to peanuts and tree nuts. Studies show the number of children living with peanut allergy appears to have tripled between 1997 and 2008.”

The rise in peanut (and other food) allergies has been linked to the rise of toxic chemicals used by the food industry. Fragrances are also full of toxic chemicals.

How many people have fragrance allergies or “sensitivities”?

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Competing Human Rights and MCS/ES

As more people become chemically “sensitive”, different types of human rights scenarios  emerge. In their latest elearning module, the Ontario Human Rights Commission has included a case study with someone who “has been diagnosed with a chemical sensitivity disability”.

Some people think that our need for clean air interferes or competes with their imagined right to use toxic products, especially those with fragrances, but no, there is no inherent right to wear perfume or use other fragranced products!

Sometimes, though,  someone may need to use a product for a disabling condition of their own. The problems arise if that product has fragrances (or some other problematic ingredients) added which cause disabling effects on another person, as the following case study from the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) shows.

OHRC Competing Human Rights 1B

Competing rights at the office
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The Courageous Canaries of MCS/ES (and mask) Awareness Month 2016

2016 MCS-ES Awareness Month Compilation

Many thanks to the Courageous Canaries of MCS/ES (and mask)
Awareness Month 2016!

Your courage, kindness, and willingness to share your photos and stories in the “What I Wear in Bad Air” series generated a lot of discussion in various support groups, and will benefit so many others who can see some of the options that are available, as worn by their peers, and that it’s more than ok to be visible. Continue reading

What I Wear in Bad Air :: Melanie

2016 Melanie and Jaiden 1Melanie and Jaiden

When I wear my mask I noticed people couldn’t see me smile at them and would avert their eyes and not smile at me.

I will usually speak and say hello. Most people will nod or say hello back even if they don’t smile or look at my eyes. Some will shrink away like I have Ebola. I’ve felt like a leper when that happens. I just hate that my kids are learning that lesson about humanity so young. I hope it will help instill a more compassionate nature in them as they see how not to be.

I started using fabric stickers on my mask sometimes and noticed that people would smile at them. I felt less invisible even if it was my stickers they smiled at more than me. I have several different ones including penguins, crosses, and holiday relevant ones I wear around Christmas time.

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What I Wear In Bad Air :: K.B.

 

2016 K.B. Disneyland vacation

“I need to wear a mask around people due to artificial fragrances, car fumes, etc. ‘Normal’ everyday activities, such as putting petrol/gas in the car, can no longer be done.

This photo represents that fact that we can often overcome things that seem impossible. Taken in California in Disneyland on our family trip from Australia to California this year thanks to ‘safe’ accommodation at a friends house, oxygen, mask, activated carbon scarfs & bedding, truck full of supplements & healthy eating. “

~ K.B.

To learn more about masks see

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