Some on campus want to ban perfume, cologne and other strong fragrances from classrooms

One Person's "Scent" is Another One's Stink

It's not exactly up there with classic campus battles like free speech and racism, but Stanislaus State has an issue that's dividing it Turlock campus.

A group calling itself the Neurotoxicology Association has recently formed and its members want to ban perfume, cologne and other strong fragrances from classrooms.

"Toxins are getting straight into brains, killing neurons, making it impossible to concentrate in classrooms," said the group's president Kristin Oosterkamp, a senior studying psychology.

The group's faculty advisor is Dr. Dawn Strongin, who already makes it a practice to ask students to come to her classes fragrance-free.

"It's not about aesthetics, not about smelling good. It affects their ability to think, concentrate. A lot of people have migraines", said Strongin.

http://www.news10.net/display_story.aspx?storyid=33458

That'll save anyone from coming into contact with ANYTHING AT ALL!!!

I'd ban human flatulence if I could.

I've seen some of them clear out a classroom in no time.

We've had to leave resturaunts and concerts before after being assailed by somebody's perfume or cologne. I'm not sensitive in that way, but is seems as though more and more people are forgetting that they only need a spritz, not the whole bottle dumped on. I've had tears come to my eyes being caught in the same room as somebody who applied their scent with a bucket.

I see know problem with this.

There seem to be some ***really*** strong scents out there. I can see people having a problem. I swear to god one of them smells like a can of bug spray to me! (RAID to be exact).

I swear to god that stuff smells like "Deep Woods Off".

And the more Raid-like it is, the more they slather on. I've had to change my seat at restaurants to avoid the awful smell while I try to eat. At least there's no bugs around these people, just a stench.

we imagined she had a 55 gallon drum above her shower and every morning she'd pull a cord and, like that scene from Flashdance, deluge herself in perfume.

Every morning she had to walk through the entire building, collecting papers from the day before. Her scent would hang in the air, so heavy you could tell ten minutes after she'd left that she'd been there. We nicknamed her "Hangtime," after the football term for how long a punt is in the air.

And yes, it was enough to take your breath away if you had to sit in a room with her.

Seems like a lot of these issues could be resolved with communication vice banning. We had a dude like that in our office. One day at lunch my boss casually mentioned that maybe he was over-doing it a little. Solved the problem, no one got their feelers hurt, everyone happy.

I actually told a friend of mine that she ought to tone down the perfume and that her coworkers probably were too polite to say anything. She took my advice. And I bet her fragrance did bother people and rather than talk to her about it, they talked among themselves; so, I agree, being up front is the best.

I used to work in a building with over 500 employees. There was no ban on perfumes or other fragrances, but most of the people at work were conscious of that type of thing because we were near Santa Cruz and San Francisco where consciousness about allergic reactions to fragrances is not a new thing at all. The only action I remember we had to take was put a sign in the restrooms asking people not to put room deodorizers in the room.

You can tell where this guy's been for about two hours after he leaves. Gag, choke.

Mr. Bones will love the name "Hangtime."

His mom has severe allergies..she can be in a store and doing just fine, then walk by the candle display or the soap aisle and her face will break out in hives and she can't breathe.
I know there are those people who think people are just being dramatic when they say they have allergies to scents like that but you and I both understand that it IS for real, and it is very VERY serious.

We have also had to leave restaurants when a perfume was effecting him. We consider perfume pollution.

but usually I just get up and move somewhere else.

But wasting all that time and energy in forming a group to have perfume banned is just that, a waste.

urine. Since I'm in student services, I don't always have the choice to get up and walk away.

Honestly, when I first smelled the stuff, I thought the student just hadn't had a shower in a couple of days but then I started noticing it on other male students - none of them (including the first) looked all that dirty!

Leave? Not practical, is it?

Some people wear way too much perfume and some of us have asthma and/or various allergies and find it hard to breathe and start coughing and wheezing when we're exposed to such strong scents in heavy concentrations.

It would be cruel for someone to dump sugar in a diabetic's sugar-free drink, right?

It's equally cruel to torment fragrance-sensitive people with colognes.

I've had to leave Home Depot, which is a humongous building and has very high ceilings, because a woman had on a lot of awful cologne. I needed something near where she was but couldn't get within twenty feet of her because of the fumes.

So I can certainly understand why some students need to have perfumes and colognes banned. MAYBE if everyone toned down the amount they put on considerably, they wouldn't have to ban them completely.

Give them an inch, they'll take EVERYTHING.

It is life-threatening to some, can be extremely painful, and the after-effects can last for a long time afterward. I know from first-hand experience.

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Nose clips wouldn't work, because since you are still breathing, the molecules coming off the allergen would still get in your throat and lungs and set off your allergy. This isn't being whiny or wanting attention, this is a fucking life or death matter for many, many people. Aside from the fact that it is downright assholish to drench yourself in a cologne or perfume, thus subjecting those around you to your nauseating smell, those scents can literally kill people, or make them violently ill, all within a matter of minutes.

Just because you can go through life without having to deal with allergies doesn't mean that everybody has that option. In fact in these days of increasing air pollution, both indoors and outdoors, more and more people are having violent allegeric reactions to all sorts of things.

I just fucking love the empathy and sympathy that so called progressives exhibit around here sometime, calling people who are concerned about their very life "whiny asshats" Tell you what, nah, never mind, I'd better not suggest that particular lesson here, it would get me kicked off the board.

Simply kill the person with allergies.

To harsh, perhaps? Well, that's what you'd have to do because it's not about the scent. For a person to remain alive, that person has to breath. You can plug the nose, and the air enters through the mouth and with it all the chemicals that cause the reaction.

As an aside, here we have a perfect example of "unbiased" ignorant media at work. The headline implies it's about the smell. It isn't. It's about the substances that create the smell, which are inhaled into the body and cause reactions. It's not the *smell* of sodium cyanide that kills you. It's the chemical itself.

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Yep. Disgusting.

Oh, sorry! That's already been done.

Are smokers banned? Or is smoking banned?

I'm a smoker and have never been banned from anything because of that; though I have been told that I'd be banned if I smoked.

Am I missing something?

edited: typo

overcrowded orange cab in Teheran on a hot August day?

Frankly, this "put away your peanuts" and No-No-No (to perfume, BO juice, and what have you) culture has to stop. I've seen dramatic objections to LEMON and ROSE water, by people who don't know what they're smelling and "assume" the worst.

Frankly, I think a lot of this activity is attention-seeking behavior.

Maybe these folks should adapt, and find a method to SHIELD THEMSELVES from this "harm" rather than making everyone else adapt to their minescule minority--where's the clever inventor with the big plastic bubble they can put over their heads, so they only get pure "approved" air, untouched by the simple influences of normal people living normal lives?

However, I'm seeing a chance for big profit if a company can come up with a personal air purifier. Of course, those who object to scents in the air would probably object to having to wear something to combat the problem.

http://www.amazon.com/Personal-Supply-Wearable-Purifier...

People who "object to scents" do so for a reason -- IT MAKES THEM SICK! I hope you never have to find out what it's like. But if you do, remember all the nasty things you said about the people who are already there.

The biggest problem I have with this kind of thing is that I'm sure we can find someone who doesn't like just about everything. So what do you do? No peanuts or peanut products in a school because one child has a peanut allergy? No perfume or cologne for anyone because someone out there might get an upset stomach over it?

is that you don't get it. It's not a matter of not liking it! Hell, I LOVE nice smells! It's the chemicals that make the artificial smells that are a problem. Have you ever heard of the canary in the coal mine? Would anyone have said that the canary was a pain in the ass because he died, making it damn inconvenient for the miners who wanted to go in there? There are non-toxic alternatives -- products that neither make people ill or hurt the environment. Why wouldn't you want to try them? Do you even know what's in your perfume or cologne?

poison gasses in the air, and perfume. I know that for some the allergies are really unpleasant, but I think that these stories are just going too far. People lived with allergies fifty years ago, when our grandmas were overdoing it with their Chanel #5. They were sitting in cafeterias where many people were eating peanut butter sandwiches. And they were sitting in movie theaters and elevators and airplanes where people regularly smoked. People were able to deal with it then. I don't want to go back to smoking on planes/elevators/movie theaters, but it does seem ridiculous that people now want to ban every single irritant that ever existed on the planet.

And I'm saying that having some severe allergies.

I cough and wheeze so much my ribs hurt and I get a headache. If you've never been unable to breathe, you can't understand.

And I don't have as much problem with fragrances as some people do. It's not all fragrances that bother me. It has nothing to do with liking things or not liking them. I have allergies to things that I like a lot. My immune system is screwed up. I'm allergic to my own DNA, among other things.

It's not just perfumes, either. I can't bring jonquils or peonies inside because they're strongly scented. Outdoors, I can enjoy their scent. But if I bring them inside, in a closed space, the scent molecules quickly spread through the air and I have a reaction.

Excuse me for having bad genes or being exposed to bad shit in the environment but that's how it is.

I hope it never happens to you because it's not fun at all.

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I once new a guy who went into diaphylactic seizures because he was sitting next to somebody with toxic concentrations of hypochondria.

They should ban that.

but you clearly are ignorant of an illness called Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. It's real. You don't have to believe it's real, but that doesn't change the facts.

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to those who experience them. No one is disputing the distress. The cause of the symptoms, however, is very likely to be psychological in these cases.

then there's no reason people shouldn't wear perfume.

Are you a doctor? Have you run psychological tests on the patients, including an MMPI? Is it either fair or responsible to say the cause is psychological if you haven't treated any of these patients or run the appropriate tests?

it's very debilitating. She can't go anywhere because of all the artificial scents. Nothing natural bothers her at all, is not allergic to animals or anything like that. But she's one of the people who could literally stop breathing if overexposed.

Well said.

and remember your snarky post here.

when you go shopping, when you go to a restaurant, when you just want to live a normal life??? I know AirmensMom and I've seen how she got sick on the smells.

So you are saying because she can't avoid smelling bad stuff she is supposed to stay home?? Live a life as a hermit?? You can dedice NOT to eat strawberries when going somewhere. She CANNOT decide if she wants to smell something or not.

Life has smells. Some good, some bad, and some are really offensive. But that's just LIFE.

For those who are extremely oversensitive to... whatever... then they need to make adjustments in their lives to limit their exposure to... whatever.

she already makes a lot of sacrifices ... like not being able to work anymore ....

And it isn't that she gets sick on organic scents but on CHEMICAL scents that are in perfumes and other stuff. You should try it. Go to a normal store and really notice the smell that is all around you. When I visited her and wasn't exposed to smells in her house it hit me quite a lot when we went somewhere. And I am not allergic or anything, I just noticed how we are overexposed to unnatural smells.

Many perfumes and fragranced personal care products contain Phthalates. These do not have to be listed on the label since they are considered trade secrets. Phthalates can be carcinogenic chemical plasticizers, solvents, and fixatives. They have been linked to birth defects and that's why many advise pregnant women to choose unscented products and skip the perfume or use only true essential oils. Children and pregnant women are cautioned against using Alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEs), Octoxynol, and Nonoxynol as they can disrupt normal hormone function.

But they're not made in a test tube from toxic chemicals. I hope you never get to understand it from my perspective ... because that would mean you have developed a chemical sensitivity that will disable you. Wait, what am I saying? Perhaps that's exactly what you need to see how wrong you are!

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but at some point one has to buy groceries.

Avoidance is exactly what people with chemical sensitivities have to do. You CANNOT decide not to smell something if that something is everywhere. You have no clue as to what you're talking about. Lifestyle adjustments are beyond anything you can imagine.

My priorities are not fucked up. Anyone who would force someone else into disability status because they insist on wearing their favorite fragrance to work has fucked up priorities. I am not entitled to an "shopping or eating adventure". But I'll repeat that at some point you have to buy groceries. I know my UPS driver by name because I do so much online shopping. What's fucked up is that so many people think they are entitled to wear enough toxic chemicals to make other sick from several dozen feet away. Why do we worry about terrorists using chemical weapons on us? Most Americans (and apparently many at DU) are more than willing to poison themselves with their unwavering trust of the fragrance industry.

There's no point in arguing with someone who won't even try to understand. This is not an imagined illness. It is recognized by Social Security and ADA. You don't need to agree because facts are facts.

They'll bring them TO you. Right to your front door. And you can shop ONLINE!!!! Anything you want. Royal Ahold has bought every other supermarket chain from GIANT to STOP N SHOP and beyond in the country, and they're doing it all over. In places where you can't get Peapod, you can find other services that do the same thing. What do you think the elderly do?

Or, you can skip the shitty supermarkets. I do. I actually go to a GROCERY store quite frequently. It's small, it costs more, but it's well stocked with quality stuff, and you can get in and out in ten minutes.

Or, you can hire a kid to get your groceries. It's what lots of disabled people do.

There ARE ways to get by. And they're likely to be more successful than demanding that people accomodate a teeny percentage of the population.

Look, people in wheelchairs can't climb Everest. When you have a sickness or a disability, there ARE some things you can't do. And there are, like it or not, LIMITS to accomodation.

Insisting that everyone march to the scent-free tune of a fraction of a percent of the population is just not REASONABLE. Reasonable accomodation is one thing; dramatic insistence on conformity to suit a tiny minority is frankly, ABSURD.

Sorry if you don't like that. But that's the way it is.

Actually Publix used to deliver, but they stopped. And the drivers were so drenched in cologne that I might as well have gone to the store.

You have NO CLUE WHATSOEVER! Being disabled means you don't have extra cash to hire people to do stuff!

BTW, I get by just fine. I avoid assholes, except the ones on DU apparently. But when someone wears something that makes another person SICK ENOUGH TO BE UNABLE TO WORK, a reasonable human being would stop wearing the stuff. We're talking about people's livelihoods here and you just don't give a fuck. Maybe there's something in those chemical fragrances that affects your attitude and you don't even know it.

Sorry I don't like it? Here's the way it is: People ARE getting sick from fragrance. MORE people are getting sick all the time! Does that tell you something? Hey, maybe you'll be one of the lucky few one of these days. Karma can really suck, after all.

But hey--'The drivers are DRENCHED in cologne!!!'

Yeah, all of 'em. Pity the eternal victim.

It's a cold, cruel world out there.

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when it comes to breathing chemical free air. And I DO expect others to alter their lifestyle so they aren't needlessly putting chemicals into the air I breathe - for the express purpose of making other people inhale it.

So I guess you got me there.

Some people will sit around the house without perfume, and then when they are ready to go out in public, that's when they put it on. When that's done, it's done with the deliberate intent of making other people inhale those chemicals. That's the only purpose - and it's done knowing that it makes other people sick.

That is beyond rude. I can't even find a way to rationalize that behavior.

The person should stay at home because they are allergic? You must be kidding. What kind of life is that?

One that most of the people in this thread have no clue about.

It's not that hard. I do it, as I have said elsewhere. If it makes me ill, I skip it.

Plenty of people cater to these folks, too--with 'natural' this and perfume-free that-- it's a big business for some.

But oh, their "RIGHT" to be piggy mall consumers might be slightly abridged, because the 99 percent of people who don't have a problem won't kowtow to them...they actually might have to shop ONLINE....oh, the horror!!! Amazing how they can manage to get on a computer, emitting all sorts of ghastly plastic-ish smells, to complain without difficulty....

Sorry. I am just not moved.

"I am just not moved."

Because these things are toxic, not just to those who are hyper sensitive to them.

Nobody ever got cancer because of second-hand perfume.

The companies just aren't obligated to note that on the packaging.

Ask an allergist... or someone who spends thousands of dollars seeing allergists.

Sand is carcinogenic, Juniperx. Nobody ever got cancer from a trip to the beach. Unless you count sun exposure.

In this age of deregulation, you shouldn't be surprised. Just Google perfume carcinogenic and you will find thousands of articles on the carcinogens in perfumes, and in laundry detergent, and in dryer sheets, and in your children's' pajamas. There used to be laws against this crap. Not anymore.

Sand is not carcinogenic... it's glass... a slow-moving, non-porous liquid. You cannot be allergic to glass. There may be organic matter or chemicals, such as crude oil. But sand itself is very benign.

They're still regulations against carcinogens and the perfumes around now are the same ones around years ago during this mythological golden-age of perfume regulation.


"Sand is not carcinogenic..."

Sure it is. That's why when you order it from a chemical supplier there's a little warning label saying it's a suspect carcinogen. You can even read about on the MSDS for sand.

http://www.sciencestuff.com/msds/C2448.html

"a slow-moving, non-porous liquid."

Sand is not glass. Neither are liquid.

"You cannot be allergic to glass."

You realize that allergies and cancer are two different conditions, right? It's hard to tell with some people in this thread.

"But sand itself is very benign."

I agree, despite being a suspect carcinogen, sand is very benign. You know what's also benign? Perfume.

maybe it isn't the most important thing to go to the Mall or to a restaurant but sitting home not able to do anything isn't really that much joy either. Friendships suffer that way. Family suffers because of it. Ever thought of the affection it has on them too?

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We were at a CoCos and a family came in with their grandpa in tow.. The poor old guy was on oxygen & had a walker. he could barely move, and looked to be in real distress.. They sat at a table near us, and I kept ooking over at him.. His hands shook so badly he could barely hold a fork, and ,looked like he should be in an ICU unit, instead of in a restaurant.. they basically ignored the old guy and chattered on and on.. I felt so sorry for the old guy..I cannot believe that an evening out at Cocos was something he was enjoying.. Insted of bringing him some food at home or cooking him a meal where he lived, the dragged this poor old soul out and then ignored him like he was a piece of furniture.

or at least they try to. You clearly have no clue as to what is involved or the extent of the illness. Once again, it's not a matter of not liking it.

You can control whether you eat strawberries. It's pretty hard to get away from fragrance when it's used everywhere. Hell, it's even hard to get garbage bags that aren't perfumed! I would challenge you to try to avoid fragrance for one week and then come back and tell me how easy it is.

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not all stores carry the same items? Even the SMALL stores, believe it or not.

You are not pointing out facts. You are showing your disdain for people who have an illness you don't understand.

Do some research, find out what's in the chemical soup you so enthusiastically defend, and then come back and call me a "scent nazi". If you really do the research, you'll never want to touch the stuff. But what am I saying? You're not interested in facts.

They sent ALL the perfumed garbage bags to YOUR store!!!

OK......

Hey, I'm not "defending chemical soup." Enthusiastically or otherwise. But gosh, that was a great dramatic line to toss out, there!!!!

I'm telling YOU to take some responsibility for your condition. Not blame those scented garbage bags you simply can't avoid, and that I can't find on a bet....

You're the one who needs to do some research to find ways to live with your affliction.

I already have it figured out--if it bothers me, I AVOID it. You might try it.

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people held you down and crammed strawberries into your mouth for an hour or so. That would be wrong, wouldn't it? And you'd get sick, right?

That's what it's like for a lot of us. We go into a store and someone's cologne has us gasping, choking, wheezing, unable to breathe. It's in the AIR we have to breathe. How the hell do we avoid breathing AIR???

We're not talking about not LIKING a scent. There are scents and foods I LOVE that I am allergic to.

People can DIE from allergies and asthma attacks.

because no one is allergic to B.O.

The disgusting fragrances on the market here can lead to anaphylactic shock and DEATH. Ditto for peanuts. Even if it was a "minescule minority," which it isn't, do you really think these people deserve to die so that others can wear the latest fragrance? I think all the hand-wringing about secondhand smoke is silly in comparison--no one ever died from it on the spot. But perfume and peanut allergies are DEADLY serious.

The few that do need to adjust their lifestyles. That's the way the world works.

If I don't like something, or it bothers me, I AVOID it.

I wouldn't willingly go to places where I was endangered. It's called common sense. It's worth trying sometime.

And it IS a minescule minority. If it weren't, the shit you're griping about wouldn't sell. The companies that sell that perfume aren't charities.

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Alter their lifestyles by, say, not going to class?

Yeah, that'll work.

The objection under discussion here is not about the scent as we perceive it, per se. It's about the chemicals that create that scent. The sense of smell doesn't work without vaporized particles of various chemicals entering the body, and far more people than you may realize are allergic to many of these chemicals.

Because of the saturation levels involved, most reactions are somewhat mild and largely either overlooked or attributed to some other source. Many people with hay fever are actually reacting to the perfumes people wear or that are contained in various soaps and other toiletries. To address your point, some people wear these fragrances themselves and never understand the reason they feel so bad all the time.

I am allergic to a common chemical used in men's cologne that apparently was in particularly high concetrations in Red for Men, which is what I used to wear when I went out on weekends. On Sundays and Mondays I constantly felt like I had some low-grade cold, but attributed it to the partying I'd done. I cut out the drinking and discovered the feeling was still there, and I had no idea why. I finally figured this out after having one of those tortuous allergen tests. After perusing the result, the doctor finally triggered me into telling him about the cologne I wore, which I never wore to the doctor's office and hadn't even thought to mention before.

I'm also allergic to the fragrances in most underarm deodorants, btw, but there doesn't seem to be enough that gets into the air when other people wear it to bother me. If it just touches me, I break out in a rash for a week. I have to use plain soap and specific kinds of deodorant as a result.

My mother is so allergic to the chemicals in some fragrances she was sent to the hospital after having been exposed to high concentrations of it for months. She did go into shock.

And this happened to her at work, after a new employee started there who basically bathed in the stuff. Would you suggest my mother, who had worked there for 18 years if that matters, be forced to alter her lifestyle and get another job?

She could have asked for her desk to be moved. And if the person was wearing "high concentrations" it likely would have offended the normal nose, too. That's not the same as demanding that people walk around stinking because you or others can't handle ordinary products.

If you're THAT allergic, you'll have trouble making your way TO class, passing all those people that can't be controlled by a professorial edict.

Sign up for online study, in that case, and stay home. That way you won't have to worry about some pesky janitor wearing Aqua Velva mopping the hall outside the class.

Sometimes, it just might be YOU who has to adjust.

She did ask for her desk to be moved. The problem is there was only so much room in the office, and she and this other employee, due to the nature of their jobs, had to work in close contact much of the day.

As for "offending the normal nose" I thought I had made clear this isn't about the nose or the sense of smell. She could have had her nose plugged, and the same result would have occurred. The chemicals get in the body by breathing, and the reaction occurs either due to allergies or specific sensitivities to other kinds of chemicals.

In any case, I fail to see why anyone should have to go to such great lengths to avoid something that affects them medically when the alternative -- a person who insists on wearing perfume using simple soap and water on a regular basis -- suffices.

and not simply drama, then the employer should have found a way to accomodate in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities act. Or been sued for not accomodating.

Did she not ASK the offender to tone it down? Did the offender refuse? What did the employer say?

I just cannot believe that this situation persisted in this fashion, to this level, with no ability to resolve it.

I'm sorry, I just smell a rat here--forgive the expression.

If someone is THAT sick, they likely qualify for disability. And if the person wearing the perfume or what have you stunk up the room, surely others, even if they didn't have an odd allergy, would have piped up.

I fail to see why 99 percent of the population have to 'accomodate' themselves to one percent. If the perfume offended the majority, that would be one thing--but that's not the case.