Having Scent Sensitivities Stinks!

Light-handed use of scented products can make someone’s day easier

I get into the Uber and immediately roll down my window. I stare hatefully at the car vent air freshener as my head begins to pound. Again.

Walking into an office bathroom, I pause as a cloud of cleaning product fog envelops me. I can feel my eyes water and my throat and lungs begin to feel like there is a small boxer punching their way out from within. Again.

I move away from a neighbor as he makes his way around the table at a community event because his cologne is so strong, I can pretty much taste it. Automatically, I start to feel ill. Again.

These things are a regular everyday occurrence for me and many others with chemical allergies and scent sensitivities. I had always been on the conservative end of my relationship with scents, but after being one of the “lucky” ones to get H1N1 flu back in 2009, my sensitives got so much worse. Not an easy thing to have navigated over the past 15 years in a world where it seems like EVERYTHING has to have a scent attached to it (insert unimpressed face here).

“But, Julie! The commercials say I have to have laundry that smells fresh for weeks and that I should spray air fresheners every chance I get! I need to douse myself in expensive perfume and scrub my counters with something that will announce to everyone’s olfactory system I am aggressively clean!!” Do you, though? How often do we actually think about what all those chemicals are doing to our health, whether someone has sensitivities or not? The Canadian Lung Association shares on their website that scented products can contain several toxic chemicals. Even “scentless” products are not 100 per cent without risk, but generally don’t have any additional scent added to the product, or a compound has been added to mask its scent rather than remove the underlying toxic chemicals.

Victoria Stevens, the owner of Metropolitan Rockabilly Hair Design, has intimate knowledge of what I am talking about. She works behind the chair in a salon, and also does mobile hair styling. She experiences health issues due to scent sensitivities as well and, in her line of work, this is extra challenging. “As someone who works in an industry with a lot of smelly products, it is difficult to find scent free products that also work well,” she says.

Victoria can be triggered by scents that will cause her to get an instant migraine. In her salon, she can control the products she uses. However, she has had to quit jobs at other salons because the products they used caused her to react constantly. When asked what salons could do to help alleviate effects of chemicals and scents for their staff and clients, she says good ventilation is key. With her own clients, she discusses their own sensitivities when they come in. She also believes that this is a route that salons can take to ensure they avoid using products on their clients that have proven to be triggering in the past.

Some organizations and workplaces not as dependent on products like a salon, can take additional steps to safeguard everyone’s health. I have been a contract instructor at NAIT for the past 11 years, and was delighted when they rolled out a scent awareness campaign. Posters around campus informed that scented products can cause negative reactions for some people, and encouraged that they not be used.

Brenda Binette, Manager of Health Safety & Environment at NAIT, also has her own struggles with scent and chemical triggers. She says that when people see the posters or hear from their colleagues about their issues with scents, they generally react positively and have no problem reducing or eliminating the scents they wear and use. “No one has complained about not being able to bring in candles or diffusers, or not wearing perfume.” Brenda praises the success of this campaign because it informs people about something that they may not otherwise be aware of. “Nobody wants to make another person feel ill,” she adds.

For the past four years, I have been working from home. This means less exposure on a day-to-day basis to scents on public transportation and in the office. I have fewer headaches and asthma flare-ups, and I feel that my overall health is better because I can control what I use in my space.

I know encouraging people to stop using scented products is too big of an ask. However, some things can help both sides of this issue. Scent is better as a discrete, intimate thing. A whisper of scent when someone gets close to you or a faint hint as you enter their home can be a lot easier to deal with (and distance yourself from) than when your scent enters a person’s space like a high school marching band. Also, consider those of us with these sensitives like your canaries in a coal mine: Maybe what we react to should give everyone else food for thought to consider limiting exposure to scented products and the chemicals they contain.