Recent research from the University of Washington (UW) has revealed that freshly-scented laundry comes with an unexpected price. In the first study to examine dryer vent exhaust, fragrance components in some of the best-selling liquid clothing detergents, fabric softeners and dryer sheets were found to infuse the vented air with a veritable rogue's gallery of hazardous pollutants, including two known carcinogens.
— Good thing they didn't test the emissions from my perfume cabinet. Read more at Scented laundry products found to emit harmful chemicals from dryers at Gizmag.
Naturally the first comment there is a snide, self-involved declaration that “walking around in a toxic cloud doesn’t make you attractive.” Why is it that so many people don’t have an edit button to pre-emptively stop the jackass comments? And who really wears perfume for other people, anyway?
Actually most people who wear perfume do so, “for other people.” Why else would marketers advertise perfume as creating an irresistible attraction to the opposite sex (or, in the case of Calvin Klein and a few other companies, as creating an irresistible attraction to very young models of both sexes).
Laundry substances can be pretty powerful, and unfortunately, the companies change their formulas more than perfume companies. While I don’t know of any evidence of dangers from dryer exhaust (which is almost vented to the outside, rather than affecting people in a confined space), alot of people get rashes and other strong reactions to laundry chemicals. I like the idea of u sing baking soda, a relatively simply chemical for a softener. I really like laundry to smell fresh because it has been hung outside.
You must live in a dry climate or else you get to do your laundry during the day. I have to do most of my laundry in the evening, and if I hung it outside in one of our muggy evenings, it would acquire the lovely fresh smell of mildew. I know from having to do this after Hurricane Ike, when our power was out for 2 weeks. I tried to wash some jeans–they took 2 days to dry.
LOL at the “toxic cloud”.
I will say that I am probably more middle of the road on this issue than most perfumistas. I’ve switched to lots of unscented products because I figure I already get more than my share of carcinogens from my perfumes.
Uttering snide, sarcastic, self-serving comments doesn’t make you attractive!
I try my best to avoid such people. I believe most of them are deeply unhappy individuals who simply cannot bear for anyone else to be enjoying life.
There’s a woman somewhere (Probably involved in this story somehow) who is trying to get the government to regulate dryer emissions, because she says they are dangerously toxic.
I honestly think we are well beyond 1984/Big Brother, here.
I would think they’d have to do a much bigger study to get any attention on this issue. This one was tiny.
I agree in the sense that this study is part of a larger regulation mentality that would appear to have real teeth (at least in Europe) with those IFRA (sp?) regulations that are now keeping oakmoss out of our chypres and until recently actually considered a ban on vanillin. Anyone know if the frag industry is taking countermeasures? because you never hear about it in popular press.
IFRA is fighting back by regulating materials before anybody tells them to. That’s why they’re so proactive in removing allergens from fragrance.
That’s a good point. I shouldn’t be so reductive 🙁
Still, as an outsider to the business side I get a vibe from their public statements that IFRA may not adequately respect the heritage aspect of perfumery — women in the 20’s, 50’s or even 70’s were apparently walking around with irritants all over their skin, all the while smelling great for it, and women in this decade should still have that at least as a choice.
I would agree wholeheartedly — I’ll take the irritants any day — but the industry is scared that if they don’t take action, outsiders will impose their own will. Hard to say if they’re right or not.
With the number of law suits filed over people wearing fragrance in public, it’s only a matter of time until a neighbor decides to do the same over their next door neighbor’s usage of “toxic” laundry substances. 🙁 There are some soaps/detergents I’m sensitive to but I just don’t use them rather than demand they be reformulated or yanked from the shelves, and I don’t have a problem being around other people who use them. It’s just my touchy skin and always has been.
Maybe I should have been grateful over my then toddler twins’ concentrated efforts to save us from the consequences of our soap and softener when they dilligently spent secret moment after secret moment filling the dryer vent with handfuls of little pebbles from the rock garden. We couldn’t figure out why our then new dryer wasn’t working until the gentleman repairing it brought us a little bulging bag of stones that were obstructing everything. They were just trying to save us and the neighborhood, little darlings. 😉
LOL!
Too cute!!!!!
Yes, the little dears! I can imagine my 4 yr old doing something similar…
‘ “This is an interesting source of pollution because emissions from dryer vents are essentially unregulated and unmonitored,” said Professor Anne Steinemann.’
Hmm …
On http://depts.washington.edu/exposure/press_release.html:
“In the past two years, I’ve received more than 1,000 e-mails, messages, and telephone calls from people saying: ‘Thank you for doing this research, these products are making me sick, and now I can start to understand why,’” Steinemann said.
I don’t use dryer sheets or fabric softeners and I use natural unscented biodegradable laundry soap so I’m not an advocate of these scented laundry products, but it looks like this study was not well done and better research is needed. Here’s a link to a post at Perfumer and Flavorist that mentions various defects in the study: http://www.perfumerflavorist.com/fragrance/research/128461228.html
For example this P&F post says, “the highest concentrations of four of the seven hazardous air pollutants detected were found when no laundry products were included, and the number of controls used in the study was limited.”
I think far too much fragrance is used in functional products, but if we want accurate information about these sorts of issues we need to do more thorough and careful research, which really wouldn’t be very difficult.
I think the problem comes from heating the chemicals in the laundry products. They get way hotter than they ever could from just wearing them and they are formulated to stick to fabric, so that’s different too.
My personal experience with mild chemical sensitivities (it varies depending on the general state of my health and what I’m being exposed to) is that fine fragrances have never, ever caused me a problem even though I have chronic migraines. (I know this from testing it out.)
However, the last place I lived, a condo, vented the neighbor’s dryer directly into my windows and I would have to jump up and close windows at the first sign or I would be almost incapacitated with neurological problems (difficulty with words, severe light and sound sensitivity, etc.). If he started the wash when I was asleep I would wake with ER worthy headaches and I’d be terribly ill for the day.
So, there is a difference, but it’s not an obvious one and unfortunately it’s presented with a holier-than-thou attitude that is really irritating. I’d almost prefer the exhaust, heh. Plus the fragrance residue is very different from anything I wear – it too can make me sick if it’s too strong. It’s definitely not a straightforward issue.
I live in a large apartment building. The air is supposed to flow from the outside, through the hallways, under the doors, and out vents in the kitchens and bathrooms. If people open their windows, however, the air pressure causes the air to be pushed out of apartments into the hallways and other people’s apartments. I walked the hallways on most of the floors once and had nasal congestion afterward from all the various roomsprays, cigarette smoke, cooking fumes, dryer sheet scent, etc. – gaah! (But no vintage Guerlain, Cire Trudon or anything else interesting in evidence, regrettably!)
Indoor pollution is a serious issue, and I’d be GREATLY relieved if more people avoided dryer sheets, fabric softeners, etc., which are not really good for the equipment, either. Regulating dryer vents sounds weird, though.