Pretty Stinky

About 30 or 40 years ago a commercial appeared in popular magazines saying "Beethoven never smelled this good before." Sweatshirts with pictures of Beethoven were in style and the ads were pushing laundry detergent with perfume in it.

That commercial can be remembered as the beginning of the fragrance age in America. Before that people wore perfume, cologne, or "toilet water," some cosmetics contained fragrance, and some people used scents in their homes to cover up unpleasant odors, but that was about all.

Then fragrances became used everywhere. Laundry and cleaning products were only the beginning. Since then fragrances have been added to hundreds, if not thousands, of products. Stores, restaurants, churches, and even offices fill the air with smells. And most of those are made with chemicals.

When we smell something all the time we become less aware of it so many people don't even realize their clothes, hair, bodies, and the places they spend time are full of them.

'Odor eliminators' don't actually take odors out of the air. Instead they contain airborne chemicals that counteract our sense of smell.

Since the chemical fragrances and odor eliminators became prevalent there has been a great increase in autism and cancer. Could there be a relationship here?

If the chemicals I'm talking about directly caused those conditions everyone would have them, and that's not the case. But what if that's one of two or more factors that work together to cause one of those conditions?

Even if that were not a possibility thousands of people have allergies and chemical sensitivities to perfumes so it would be helpful to them if we all switch to using fragrance free products as much as possible. By doing so we might even save some lives.