Tag Archives: Fragrance

Fragrances, Hormones, Women, and Children

While these resources are primarily directed at women of childbearing age and children, they are really applicable to all of us. If a mother stops using perfume, but the father still piles on the scented deodorant, aftershave, and cologne, then his sperm, the mother, and children (born or unborn) are still being exposed to harmful chemicals.

If other family members, friends, and places like daycares are using scented laundry,  personal care, and cleaning products, they too are putting moms-to-be and kids at risk.

The adverse effects from these chemicals can be life-long, even longer. Our exposures can affect our grandchildren. Eliminating them from our lives now will ensure better health all around, including downstream, where fish and wildlife are also being affected.

WECF Pregnancy and EDCs

The short video below, produced by Women in Europe for a Common Future  (WECF), provides simple, important information on how you can protect yourself and your child from Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs). They are found in so many places now.

WECF have also developed a new website, NESTING, which is another good resource for all of us. They have assembled a lot of good advice there.

Here’s an example from their Cleaning & personal care page:

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Have Your Say For May by Amy

tilted momAmy from Florida shares this with us:

Q ~ If you could tell the world ONE thing about your life with MCS/ES (or any other invisible disability that has MCS/ES as a symptom), what would it be?

A ~ What I’d really like to tell the world about my life is a full explanation of MCS, such that everyone would understand it enough to prevent, treat and accommodate me and everyone with this illness. That seems like more than I could do even if I had a whole book rather than a blog post. So I will focus my answer on something a bit more manageable.

I would tell the world that the invisible nature of this illness affects me on many levels. Some of the substances I react to are invisible, though they are obviously detected by my body. Some of my symptoms are invisible to others, but are still felt by me and still limit my abilities. Most importantly, the primary survival mechanism of chemical sensitivity is avoidance, which means that I have to avoid public places. Thus, the sicker I am, the more invisible I am to my community. That invisible nature of this illness is the most devastating part for me.


Q ~ How has this one thing affected your life?

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A Fine Fragrance for a Special Valentine

This is special, so special that you might be inspired in ways that surprise you!

MYSTERY 2MYSTERY… Should we trust the fragrance industry with our loved ones health?

We could buy products that are made by a self regulated industry that believes it’s ok to include many harmful chemicals (derived from petroleum and other fossil fuels) in their products (according to their member’s voluntary disclosure of over 3000 ingredients, which is as close to disclosure as they come) or we can show our love for each other by doing things that nurture long term health and well-being for each other and the planet we all depend on for life.

The choice is ours once we know it exists.

Here are a few more nourishing ideas for gifts of love:

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Your Fragrance Is Less Regulated Than Fragrance For Pesticides!

No joke!

The world is an exceedingly strange place when products that are designed to kill unwanted and uncared for “pests” have fragrance chemicals added to change the way they smell, and those fragrance chemicals are better regulated than the ones in products we living (wanted and cared for?) humans are sold, for intimate use, on a daily basis.

-cide
1.indicating a person or thing that kills: insecticide
2.indicating a killing; murder: homicide

fragrance regulations

How is it that the fragrances added to pesticides are more regulated than the fragrances we are exposed to 24/7 now, from laundry, personal care, cleaning products,  scented candles and air “fresheners” (among others, as everything is fragranced these days)?

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UnStopped and Able Until…

I have heard that new ads are out and insinuating people will somehow feel richer  merely by inhaling mysterious blends of chemicals.  Please don’t be fooled. Seriously.

“Unstopables …  will add an indulgent level of luxurious scent to every load of your laundry. Add as much as you wish for up to 12 weeks* of scent enhancement so you can smell like the lifestyle you—and your wardrobe—deserve.”

They fail to mention that your neighbors who get migraines may think that the “scent enhancement” emanating from your dryer vent (which was designed to emit moisture, not chemicals) is not such a good thing for them, their asthmatic children, or for their aging parents who have lung disease and whose window is yards from your vent.

Apparently we also don’t deserve to know what we’d be inhaling if we use these things! P&G will only refer us to the self-regulated fragrance industry’s voluntarily disclosed list of over 3000 ingredients, most of which are petroleum derived. (Scroll down for a PDF of the list, which took quite a bit of sleuthing around their other website to find).

I’ve designed a few new ads for them, simplifying some of their marketing messages into plain English for you :

UnStopped and Able Until

There’s more, much more…

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Are Fragrances Drugs By Design?

From the FDA

drugs FDA

Drug by definition:

drug 1

What about fragrances when they target our brains and brain functions, including moods and perceptions?

From the fragrance industry:

Aromachology and the brain

To use fragrance technology to transmit feelings directly to the brain

???

That sounds a lot like drugs to me!

From the FDA… Is it a drug?

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How to Have Company (or Repairmen) In Your Home When You Have MCS/ES

Even when people try to be fragrance (and other chemical) free, they can have 2nd and 3rd hand residues from personal care, cleaning, and laundry products all over them. Air “fresheners” and scented candles are other items that leave residues on everything. It can take weeks to get it out of skin and pores, and longer to get it out of clothing and bedding, all the while re-contaminating the body and anything else that has contact with the fragranced surfaces or air.

rigmarole

Fragrance (and other toxic) chemicals are just all-pervasive now. Unless people are completely fragrance-free and stay out of fragrance filled places, they will have some degree of fragrance saturation in their clothes, skin, and hair. Some of the residues are also impossible to remove no matter how hard one tries, because of chemicals that are designed to penetrate and remain active for long periods of time (think of the  laundry commercials where they boast you can smell the fresh scent days later – except some of us can be affected years later, because that’s how permanent those chemicals are).

If people who use those products come to visit, not only can they leave us gasping for air (or worse) during their visit, they can leave chemical residues that will keep off-gassing from the couch and anyplace else they touched for days or weeks to come.

fragrance around a sofa

Depending on how severe one’s MCS/ES is,there are different things that can be done.

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MCS: A Life Altering Condition (Video)

 

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity: A Life Altering Condition

Produced and Directed by Alison Johnson
1:09:28 minutes

Note from Alison Johnson:

“Since 1998, I have made three long documentaries and three short ones. During this fifteen-year period, I have gained a much deeper understanding of multiple chemical sensitivity and its great impact upon so many lives. This new composite film contains the best and most effective sections of my six earlier films. I have chosen carefully which experts and patients to use from my earlier films so that this new film will be an effective way of helping people to understand multiple chemical sensitivity. The film contains footage of interviews with four members of Congress as well as with many important physicians.”

More info and a list of physicians appearing in the film:
http://www.alisonjohnsonmcs.com/multiple-chemical-sensitivity-a-life-altering-condition-dvd.html

Transcript:
http://chemicalsensitivityfoundation.org/multiple-chemical-sensitivities-life-altering-condition-transcript.html

mcs-a-life-altering-condition

Much gratitude to Alison Johnson for all of her work over the years.

It’s Not Personal, It’s The Chemicals

offended

Have you ever noticed how some people get offended when we are disabled by, or get sick from something in the products they’ve used?

What’s up with that?

???

What about those who feign disbelief that we could be harmed by something they are using? Or that they could be using something that is harmful?

disbelief

While I am not up to delving into the psychological and emotional intricacies of those responses here, or how industry pays big money to create them, I did come up with a few simple images with variations of the following text:

It’s not you! It’s not personal! It’s the chemicals!

Fragrances, personal care, and laundry products
contain toxic chemicals that make it impossible
for some people to be around those who use them.

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“Sensitivities” in the Canadian Family Physician journal

The June 2014 edition of the Canadian Family Physician journal contains a couple of excellent articles by Dr Stephen J. Genuis. Here’s the abstract and link to one of them:

Approach to patients with unexplained multimorbidity with sensitivities

Abstract:

Objective To explore the underlying causation of unexplained multimorbidity with sensitivities and to discuss the management of patients who present with this perplexing condition.

Sources of information Medical and scientific literature was used from MEDLINE (PubMed), several books, toxicology and allergy journals, conference proceedings, government publications, and environmental health periodicals.

Main message Multimorbidity with sensitivities has become an increasingly common and confusing primary care dilemma. Escalating numbers of debilitated individuals are now presenting to family physicians and specialists with multisystem health complaints, including sensitivities and fatigue, with no obvious causation, a paucity of laboratory findings, and a lack of straightforward solutions. In the recent scientific literature, there is discussion of sensitivity-related illness, an immune-mediated disorder that frequently manifests with multisystem symptoms, commonly including sensitivities and fatigue.

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