Fresh scent may hide toxic secret

Fresh scent may hide toxic secret

seattlepi.nwsource.com

The scented fabric sheet makes your shirts and socks smell flowery fresh and clean. That plug-in air freshener fills your home with inviting fragrances of apple and cinnamon or a country garden.

But those common household items are potentially exposing your family and friends to dangerous chemicals, a University of Washington study has found.

Trouble is, you have no way of knowing it. Manufacturers of detergents, laundry sheets and air fresheners aren't required to list all of their ingredients on their labels -- or anywhere else.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This new study seems to validate some of my own concerns. Often, 'scented' products tend to make me queasy so I try to avoid them whenever possible. Has anyone else noticed that there seems to have been a surge lately of new so called 'organic' based products which have been found to contain undesirable ingredients? Industry seems to be 'running wild in the streets' lately when it comes to consumer safety...

Give this article a look (and pass it along), it's an issue that more people should be aware of...

seattlepi.nwsource.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Edit: .gif link


[edit on 23-7-2008 by SystemiK]

I've thought this for years. It's completely unregulated!

I try to avoid these things as much as possible.

Starred and flagged!

reply to post by SystemiK


I'm so ignorant on this issue, I had no idea it went un-regulated to an extent. Star for you!

Just an fyi, you can replace almost every cleaning agent with a mixture of white vinegar and water. You can use vinegar to clean your sink, your counter, your stove, floor, shower, faucet, refrigerator, toilet, and just about anything else you can think of. It takes more elbow grease to remove soapscum but it does work. You can also spray it onto fabric like febreeze and it acts as an odor neutralizer.

Vinegaris totally safe so you can use it on the stove and in the fridge with no worries. And it leaves behind 0 residue. But the best part is it's about $2/gallon and a gallon lasts months because you dilute it into a spray bottle. The only cleaning product I still use is Windex because the vinegar leaves streaks on glass.

Just a lil FYI on how to avoid all those 'cleaning' products.

reply to post by SystemiK


This is something i've thought for years, in fact i have a little personal experience for you.

I live at home with my parents and my mother loves those plug in air fresheners. She bought them for the entire house, after three weeks me, my mother and my brother had a cough and started developing a skin condition. The skin on various parts of our bodies would dry and fall off, it was like very bad ecszema.

My mother wouldn't listen about the air fresheners and so one night i ripped them all out an threw them away. Within 2 weeks our coughs had gone and the skin condition was seriously settling down. My mother however was unconvinced and bought more of them, after a month the problems came back. Actually after only a week we all had coughs again (apart from my father who spends most of the week away), and after a month the skin condition came back with avengeance.

This finally convinced my family that these things were bad so we completely removed them all, including the spray air fresheners. After a full month the skin condition had disappeared, the cough had gone and 2 years later none of us have suffered the same thing since. We don't buy any of these air freshener products, we use the natural altenatives.

These air fresheners are bad and worst of all they rarely contain lists ingredients. Do most people here know that your average fragrance will contain nealry 2000 chemicals? That's not a typo, that's 2000 seperate chemicals if it's a synthetic fragrance. Carrier liquids are used in most of the plug in fragrances and that's i think where he biggest problems occured, at least with us anyway.

Hope my story was helpful.

[edit on 24-7-2008 by ImaginaryReality1984]

I hate those air fresheners with all my heart. They're supposed to smell good, but they actually all stink and give me a headache. If you want your house to smell good in a healthy way, look into natural essential oils and aromatherapy.

Another thing i hate are window and surface cleaners. I'm allergic to them and whenever somebody uses one around me i get a horrible cough and i can't breathe anymore.

People, please, look into alternative cleaning products, like vinegar and baking soda, that are safe for you and the environment!

Maybe eventually the industry will change and they'll start making safer products, if more people become aware of the danger these chemicals present to us.

Here's the problem, folks. Bad odors are caused frequently by bacteria. To kill bacteria you need dangerous substances that are likely also adverse to human health. It's a catch 22... do you want your bathroom to smell like a mixture of vinegar and crap, or do you want it to smell reasonably fresh?

reply to post by burdman30ott6


I think you missed the point. It's not just cleaning products, it's like those little plug in air fresheners that just pump out fragrance. Maybe you should check my story above. The old household cleaning products still work, it just requires a little more elbow grease that's all. The house where i live smells wonderful, we just use essential oil burners and other such things.

Originally posted by burdman30ott6
It's a catch 22... do you want your bathroom to smell like a mixture of vinegar and crap, or do you want it to smell reasonably fresh?

If you think that then you havn't cleaned with natural products, or at least cleaned correctly.

[edit on 24-7-2008 by ImaginaryReality1984]

reply to post by burdman30ott6


Wow, you must have a pretty bad oppinion about my bathroom!

Thing is, both baking soda and vinegar have antibacterial properties. Therefore they also remove bad smells. And the vinegar only smells until it's dried.

I know, when you first hear it, it sounds weird. I was skeptical about it too, but my other option was buying a gas mask and use it when i cleaned the bathroom.

I have a 2 Y.O. and a 7 M.O., plus an indoor cat. Believe me, it isn't an elbow grease matter. Both diaper bins and the litter box get cleaned daily, but I'd be very reluctant to trade in our Glade plug ins for oils.

reply to post by rapinbatsisaltherage
Not only is it unregulated but there are no plans to change anything in the future that I am aware of. However in the case of some of them the use of the product actually breaks down or destroys some of the toxins, for example the heat from the dryer or wall outlet will vaporize ethanol, acetaldehydes and pinenes, and when vaporized these substances are pretty harmless. But!, anything with the prefix benze- is likely a benzene derivative and should alway be avoided as benzene is one of the most carcinogenic and toxic substances on Earth right up there with plutonium in my opinion.

reply to post by Wallachian
Oddly enough vinegar is made from bacteria much like the beer brewing process and is is only effective because of its low Ph, acetic acid mostly. Baking soda has very little anti-bacterial effect and can be used for cleaning mostly because of its abrasive qualities. If you want to clean your bathroom safely just use diluted bleach it is safe and effective and will remove deposits left by hard water, also it is a very effective surface anti bacterial. If brewers use it, its pretty safe.

Originally posted by burdman30ott6
I have a 2 Y.O. and a 7 M.O., plus an indoor cat. Believe me, it isn't an elbow grease matter. Both diaper bins and the litter box get cleaned daily, but I'd be very reluctant to trade in our Glade plug ins for oils.

Give me a good reason please, because i clean our home with natural substances, i have oil burners, if you're worried about children you can get electric oil burners. They burn essential oils often with a carrier oil (like almond oil). Perfectly natural, perfectly safe and a lovely smell. I like sandlewood myself

The point being that you don't need these heavy chemicals, it's just a fact that you don't. I also hope your family doesn't succumb to the same problems mine did with the plug ins.

[edit on 24-7-2008 by ImaginaryReality1984]

Hydrogen Peroxide works excellent as a cleaner and kills bacteria better than most off the shelf cleaners. Kills the smell great ( 1 cat that is scared to pee in his litter box, so random corners work)

I've also read letely that it's benefits go far beyond cleaning into benefits for the body as well(food grade H2O2) and as a fertilizer.

[edit on 24-7-2008 by airteck]

reply to post by spookjr


I don't know exactly how efficient baking soda is as an antibacterian, but it does have some antibacterial properties, says this source.

Unfortunatelly its a dental research study, so it only reffers to using baking soda as an antibacterial substance in oral health care products.

reply to post by burdman30ott6


Maybe BECAUSE you have small children you should switch to an alternative air freshener. Do you really want your children to inhale constantly all those harmful chemicals?

I used to have lots of glade thingies around my house until one day when i realised i actually hate the smell and they make me nauseous.

I've always been deeply suspicious of these things...the garbage they pump out cannot be good for us, and I wonder sometimes what else they are secretly designed to do...like fluoride in toothpaste, are they meant to suppress us, or make us non-thinking? It would be a perfect disguise...at the very least, they teach us that we are smelly undesirable creatures who need to be freshened up....making us respond more readily to similarly scented products perhaps....they will smell like "home" to us, and the marketing tool has worked....or am I paranoid?

I did read somewhere that they are also a fire hazard.

In addition to baking soda and vinegar, lemon juice is a very effective cleaner and degreaser...great for cookers and microwave ovens...and smells just divine. Sometimes I mix essential oils with water in a spray bottle and use to mist the room...much healthier, although oils are still chemicals and should be treated with caution...although they are natural they can still be toxic, so do your homework. And please don't mix them with a carrier oil if you want to put them in a burner...carrier oils tend to be flammable and will ignite. Use just a few drops of neat oil on water only.

Just my pennies worth...

Cait

OK, I don't own any stock in air freshening companies or cleanser corporations, so I really have no reason to try and argue with either of you except on the basis of personal preference and convenience. I will say that my wife tends to get really bad sinus headaches from the smell of vinegar, so that substance is a no-go as a cleaner in our home. I think right now she's actually set us up with those little airwick cone things that have something that's about the same texture as a deodorant stick inside them which disolves over the course of a month or so. (I believe it's apple & cinnamon scent currently) I have no problem with the smell, actually like it.

My stance on this is that I've started taking an "Enough is enough!" attitude towards media & research fearmongering. Every day it's something new... jalapenos will kill us all, our cell phones are giving us cancer, air fresheners lead to deadly ailments, etc, etc, etc. It seems that you can't turn on the local news without seeing some overly dramatic, fake voice reporter saying "A common item found in most homes can KILL YOUR CHILDREN! We'll tell you all about it and what you can do after these commercials..." upon which time they proceed to a set of commercials that very possibly is advertising the exact product they're about to tell me can kill my kids. I've gotten tired of it and I'm done playing their game. If I use a product and it causes me or my family problems, I stop using it... if no problems occur, I ignore the fear mongers and their business of keeping Americans in a constant state of stress over product safety and hazzards. That said, I use common sense like not buying any toys or products for my children that were made in some overseas sweatshop and could have lead or God knows what in or on them.

We've been done a grave dis-service in this country by our media and product testers. It has been instilled into us to mindlessly trust anything that hasn't been told to us to be unsafe, regardless of common sense or personal experience. While likewise automatically taking any negative report on a product handed down to us as if it were the gospel of Jesus and immediately following any and all recommendations towards a product that has been labeled as "unsafe." Take the tomato scare a few weeks ago. I like tomatos, so I was able to find a local stand that was still selling them despite the fear mongering going on from our government agencies and media (in fact he was happy to sell them as he hadn't had many people willing to buy any tomatos.) When I got home, I did something incredible and I washed them. Now we've learned that millions of tomatos wasted and thousands of farmers suffered thanks to a very poorly done warning by our government which the media was all too happy to sensationalize and incorporate into the machine of unending fear. Now it's peppers... never mind the fact that the jalapenos in stores right now aren't from the supposedly contaminated batch of last month, they've been pulled from shelves and the media is strapping them into the electric chair for their next round of unending fear pugilism.

It's all a bunch of crap and it's why I tend to take any report such as this with a grain of salt... which according to the media will also kill me thanks to high blood pressure.

reply to post by burdman30ott6


It's a valid point you make with regard to how we react to reports of 'unsafe' products and I do appreciate your input.

I actually have two of the offending air fresheners in my home right now (heh...I've voiced my opinion but was overruled). I also have plenty of the aforementioned cleaning products. They are under my kitchen sink, they are in the bathroom vanities, and my garage is probably full of more health threatening chemicals than I could imagine. Having been a structural steel fabricator for 10+ years, I am more than accustomed to ingesting harmful substances as a course of necessity, but what is the harm in being aware of the risks?

Is it so bad when information arises which brings our attention to potential hazards which many people may not have been aware of? I make a choice to 'take my chances' every time I strike an arc and suck down another breath of welding fumes, but what is so wrong with presenting people with an opportunity to make their own choices as to what products they wish to use?