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Your air freshener could be harming your health

Thinkstock
Thinkstock

With scores of air fresheners out there, you can have the messiest room in your home smelling like a tropical fruit stand or a misty rainforest. But all those seemingly pleasant scents may be bad for your health.

Gels, candles, sprays plug-ins, and other household air fresheners could be masking far more serious problems than the stench of a carpet that’s been peed on by a pet or a couch that’s been doused in beer. They may also consist of harmful chemicals.

Hugh Poole is a licensed home inspector who also does air-quality investigations, and he says that using air fresheners to conceal odours can be hazardous to your health.

“You want to know that you’ve got mould,” says Poole, founder of CanInspect Building Inspections who’s on the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s list of trained indoor air quality investigators. “You want to know that something has died in your house. You want to smell those carpets—if they stink they may be unhealthy. You want to know that your roof leaks and you can smell that damp wood. If you’ve got damp wood, you’ve got bugs and you’ve got mice.

“Air quality problems are symptomatic of something else, and you have to figure out what that is,” he says. “When you disconnect from your world with olfactory system, you cut out your feedback. You actually have to trust your nose because it’s telling you something.”

Natural gas is a great example. It’s odourless, but added to it are trace amounts of mercaptan, which has a distinctive smell of rotten eggs or sulphur. The stuff reeks for a reason: if there’s a leak, it could be deadly, and you want to be able to detect it.

Nevertheless, people clearly love scents like vanilla, peach, lavender and grapefruit filling their homes. The worldwide market for air fresheners is expected to reach the value of US$8.2 billion this year, according to Transparency Market Research; in the U.S. alone, that market is estimated to hit US$1.8 billion.

Driving sales in the States are high incomes and living standards combined with rising hygiene concerns among consumers, according to the TechSci Research report “United States Air Freshener Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2019.” Widely used in offices, shopping centres, and cars, air fresheners are especially popular in households with infants and pets.

But all those lovely scents may come from a toxic source.

The four basic ingredients in air fresheners are formaldehyde, petroleum distillates, p- dichlorobenzene, and aerosol propellants, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes.

Some contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which Health Canada considers to be indoor air pollutants, and naphthalene, which has been shown to cause tissue damage and cancer in the nasal passages and lungs of rats and mice exposed to high levels in laboratory studies.

There are scores of other chemicals in some air fresheners, according to the Environmental Working Group, including sodium borate and trideceth-4, which may have developmental, endocrine, and reproductive effects, as well as preservatives and surfactants, which could cause organ and respiratory effects.

Asthma has been linked to the frequent use of air fresheners. A 2007 European study found that using air fresheners as little as once a week can raise the risk of developing the respiratory condition in adults. Published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the study found that the risk of developing asthma increased with frequency of use, but was about 30 to 50 per cent higher on average than in people not exposed to sprays.

Scented products can cause a range of other symptoms, according to the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS), including headaches, dizziness, nausea, insomnia, confusion, shortness of breath, and skin irritation. Allergic and asthmatic patients report that certain odours, even in the smallest amounts, can trigger an attack.

Not all of the ingredients are necessarily listed on an air freshener’s label. The CCOHS notes that those sold in grocery or hardware stores only require consumer labeling that focuses on immediate hazards such as corrosion (burns to skin or eyes), explosion, fire and poison. To find out all of the ingredients, it may be necessary to contact the manufacturer directly.

The EWG’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning rates 278 air fresheners for safety using a letter-grade system. Twenty per cent of products received an F, and 59 per cent scored a D. Four per cent got As.

“Clean, pure air has no smell at all – that’s what we should strive for when we clean,” the EWG says. “They [air fresheners] also contaminate the air, exposing people to a host of undisclosed, untested and potentially toxic substances, including phthalates, synthetic musks and allergens. Identify, clean up or remove odour sources. Open a window! An open box of baking soda can eliminate odours safely.”

Manufacturers of air fresheners, however, maintain that their products are safe.

“When used according to label instruction, in real life situations, air fresheners are safe,” notes SC Johnson on its website for Glade air fresheners. “In addition, there is no evidence supporting a significant risk to human health from the use of air fresheners under normal conditions.”

SC Johnson also recently expanded its ingredient disclosure website to provide product-specific fragrance ingredient information that goes beyond industry standard.

“As a leader in home fragrance, SC Johnson and its Glade® brand know that our sense of smell helps unlock a variety of positive emotions,” the company stated in a press release. “In fact, a 2013 survey conducted by Glade® found that among the 84 per cent for whom scent triggers memories, scents allow us to tap into emotion by enabling us to re-experience the joy of a specific place, person or event.”