Some people smell well, and smell good. And some people are real stinkers.
In the typical American household, the nose is assaulted by an army of smells. You rise in the morning and go to the bathroom. If you are lucky enough not to be constipated, you have your morning bowel movement, and then spray the room with an aerosol “room freshener”, to cover the smell of what you have just done. You then brush your teeth with toothpaste filled with its fresh, minty flavor and aroma that fills your nose.
The shower is next, as the room fills with steamy chlorine fumes from the city water. But that doesn’t really register with your nose because you immediately start lathering up with “fresh and clean” smelling soaps. Top that off with some shampoo for your hair, which smells like strawberries, and then with conditioner, which smells like a field of fresh Irish blossoms. You exit the shower, dry off, and apply deodorant to your underarms, giving your armpits a spicy cinnamon smell. You then apply some shaving cream with its minty fresh fragrance, and either shave your face or your legs, or both. You then splash on a little aftershave, which smells great. A little hair gel, with its ocean fresh fragrance, and you’re ready to get dressed.
Your clothing is freshly washed using a “fresh smelling” laundry detergent, and a sweet smelling fabric softener, giving your “clean clothes” a veneer of chemicals that remind you all day long, and those around you, that you use a particular laundry detergent and fabric softener, since everyone recognizes the smell. It’s the smell of clean, you tell yourself.
At this point, you reek from residues of smelly chemicals that you have put on your skin since you woke up. It’s enough to overwhelm anyone’s nose, which it does. It’s called “olfactory fatigue”. Our brain dampens the signal coming from the nose when the signal doesn’t end. Since the smell is on your hair, skin and clothing, you are breathing it in constantly, and your brain just gets tired of it. So you stop realizing that you are reeking from fragrances.
What are fragrances? Why are they used so often in products we use daily?
These smells come from chemicals that volatilize (Volatile Organic Compounds, or VOCs) and enter your nose as you breathe, and they happen to stimulate your olfactory bulb deep inside your nasal sinus near your brain. When we overwhelm our sense of smell with commercial fragrances, the brain has trouble hearing above the noise, so to speak, so it dampens the smells that are around you all the time. This makes people oblivious to the fact that they are reeking from their constantly applied fragrances.
Are these smelly chemicals safe? Not really. The FDA does not require testing of fragrances for safety. Manufacturers do not have to tell anyone what fragrances they use, since it is proprietary. Their goal is to make a smell that people become conditioned to identify as “clean and fresh”. Of course, clothing smelling like fragrance chemicals is clearly neither clean nor fresh, but laden with chemical residue. And many fabrics adsorb the chemicals, making them impossible to get out of the clothing. (This is why I hate thrift store clothing. It smells like laundry/fabric softener, and if you wash it with other clothing it makes everything else smell like it, too.)
Some of these chemicals could irritate the throat, nose, and lungs, which will lead to allergies, asthma, coughing, wheezing, runny eyes, runny nose, sneezing, and generally being snotty. They are also known to change heart rate and blood pressure, and cause headaches. And they act as estrogen-mimics, causing hormonal disruption.
When I was a kid, my mother used Tide and Bounce, so my clothing and sheets were always smelling like those products. My nose ran all the time, and I was given a freshly laundered handkerchief to blow into, which also smelled. I’d insert a tip of the handkerchief inside of my nose, trying to clean my nostril, and it would irritate my nose further from the chemicals in the handkerchief. I didn’t realize the cause, though, since my brain was oblivious to the invisible cloud of fragrance that must have encircled me for several yards.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of chemicals used for each fragrance. You are exposed to probably thousands of chemicals in the various products sold with fragrance, and some are surely to affect your mind and body. According to the Cleveland Clinic, in their article, How Fragrances Affect Health, and Ways to Reduce Exposure, over the long-term, exposure to fragrances can cause:
- Difficulty breathing
- Changes in cardiac function, specifically in the heart’s ability to pump
- Disruption to the endocrine system, which regulates hormones
- Increases in glucose levels, similar to those in people with type two diabetes, a risk that can be passed from pregnant women to offspring
- Based on early research, possible exacerbation of dementia
- Certain cancers, with high, prolonged, continuous exposure to some compounds.
Besides physiological reactions, some fragrances will be associated in your brain with certain places or events. The brain can immediately recognize a smell, even after experiencing it once. This olfactory memory is why these products have these smells. They want consumers to mentally associate buying their product whenever they smell it. It’s Pavlovian, except with a smell instead of a bell.
Meanwhile, your liver needs to detoxify from these smelly chemicals once they enter the blood from the lungs. Some of the chemical also enters the blood from the skin, via the lymphatics, when the product is in contact with the skin, as with lotions, soaps, and clothing, especially intimate clothing, like bras and underwear. If the clothing is tight, the chemical will stay longer in the skin, which could result in dermatitis if you are sensitive to the chemical.
Of course, there is the problem of second-hand fragrance, when your fragrance has to be inhaled by someone else. If everyone used the same products, then we would all stink the same. But when someone is fragrance-free, (apart from a fart now and then), the smell of someone else’s scent can be unsettling, triggering, and even nauseating.
Very nice, but scented, people are frequently guilty of smelling up everyone else’s noses. Since smelling something is like eating it, since it enters your bloodstream, exposing others to a smell is a form of body invasion. You are putting chemicals into their bodies. You might as well pry open their mouths and drip perfume down their throats.
Which brings us to another purpose of being scented. We communicate with our smells. While we don’t use pheromones like some insects do as a mating signal, we do use perfumes as a mating signal. And the reach of the smell extends the person’s presence to where they are in your personal space, even inside your head, without prior permission. It’s a breach of personal space, slapping people in the nose and head with powerful aromas.
And there is no way to protect yourself from their smell, either. For example, you can’t stop the smell of perfume by farting. They don’t cancel, although that’s the basis for using bathroom spray. It just makes it worse, and more embarrassing.
Of course, the biggest reason why people use perfumed products is because they believe they stink. Well, the truth is that some people do. (Baking soda is an excellent armpit alternative to using deodorants to cover skunk smell with perfume.) But breathing in and absorbing chemicals all day, everyday, 24/7, even in the bedsheets and on the pillowcases, is bound to cause problems.
Here are some tips to help us all breathe easier.
- Stop using fragrance-containing products. There are lots of fragrance-free detergents and soaps.
- If you have body odor, address the cause, don’t just cover it up, as they did in the Middle Ages, when they didn’t bathe.
- Avoid using perfume in a public setting. Nobody else wants to huff your stuff.
- If you experience headaches, skin irritations, and/or breathing problems such as wheezing, or feel like you have an allergy to something but you don’t know what it is, it may be what you are smelling all day and night.
- When in doubt about your smell, ask someone else what you smell like. We become olfactory fatigued from our ambient aroma.
- Be aware that your smell is reaching out and touching the olfactory bulbs of others, and could be causing them distress, allergic response, and even psychological associations that could make them act strangely.
- Boycott products that have added fragrance. They are polluting your body, your home, your children, and the environment.
Every nose knows the benefits of clean air, free from chemical smells. Even if you smell like hell, scents don’t make sense. So please think if you stink, and save others from having to consume your perfume.