Articles on Perfume | Topics: perfume, perfumes, cologne, colognes
by Yahir Snyder
In our society, we use perfumes in almost every product we make. Perfumes are in our soap and our cleaning products. We use perfumes to freshen our air, our bodies, and our pets. We cannot escape these scents in our society, yet they could be making you feel much worse than you could ever imagine.
People have used perfumes for thousands of years, but the problems with perfumes have only come about recently. Until this century, all perfumes were made of completely natural ingredients. The combining of these ingredients simply produced a nice scent, not a chemical trail that could hurt others. In recent years, perfumes have become less expensive. As a result, more and more people are able to purchase them in a variety of products. However, as these two things have happened, they have lost most of their natural ingredients and become more synthesized. More than ninety five percent of the chemicals that come in perfumes today are synthetic. They come from things like petroleum. Petroleum is known to have toxins that cause cancer, birth defects, disorders to the central nervous system, and a whole host of allergic reactions. In fact, many of the chemicals that perfumes now contain are the same chemicals that cigarette smoke contains. You wouldn't want to spray cigarette smoke on yourself, your clothes, your pets, or your laundry, but you use most of the same components when you use items containing perfumes.
The use of these chemicals goes completely unregulated because it is thought not to be dangerous. The industries that use perfumes do not have to give anything to the Food and Drug Administration. This includes formulas, testing results, safety data, or any complaints from consumers. Even if you do not notice the effects from the chemicals in perfumed products, someone else in your household or in your surroundings may be noticing them. The chemicals used in perfumes enter your blood stream when you apply the products to your skin. They can also be absorbed into your blood stream if you have residue on your clothing from your laundry soap or fabric softener. When you inhale perfume, the fumes can go straight to your brain. It is the equivalent of huffing gasoline. Your brain can suffer the same serious effects just from a single spray. Moreover, the people standing in line next to you at the post office or anywhere else you may visit may have headaches or sinus problems triggered by your artificial scent. Many people are so sensitive to the perfumes used in various products that the effects can be serious and immediately triggered by one whiff of the chemicals contained in the fragrance you are wearing. Shortness of breath and other asthma like symptoms are a very common reaction to fragrances. Fragrances can cause sneezing, watery eyes, nausea, sore throat, and coughing. If fragrances are absorbed through the skin of a person with an allergic reaction, rashes, hives, dermatitis, and eczema are not uncommon reactions. Sometimes once the fragrance is absorbed in the skin, the chemicals are more powerful than they were before they were broken down.
| Quote of the Day |
Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and “retro” clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games. It is easy to find a public for eclectic works.
| —Jean François Lyotard (b. 1924) |
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Many places are starting to institute fragrance free policies because of the serious reactions people can suffer from fragrance related products. For example, Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, has recently asked both its students and employees to voluntarily quit wearing any scented products. The regional municipality in Halifax, Nova Scotia, urges citizens to only use unscented products in their day to day life. One California Company, Alacrity Ventures, encourages employees to use only fragrance free products. They also only use unscented products in their janitorial clean-up as a commitment to a scent-free work environment. Companies across the United States and Canada are trying to create these fragrance-free policies in order to accommodate individuals who have difficulty dealing with these dangerous products because it is easier for them to enact them now than later in time when they are under scrutiny for some type of law suit action.
It is essential to others that you consider a fragrance-free policy in your own home and work place. While you may not be suffering from the serious health damage chemically produced fragrances can cause, be aware that others around you may. Until people as a whole realize that we do not need fragrances to mask every odor around us, it is essential that we, on an individual level, become aware of the serious, negative consequences these fragrance products can have on the world and people around us.
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