Conscious Choice: Smells Can Make You Sick

April 2002 | Health Conscious

Smells Can Make You Sick

by Rebecca Ephraim, RD, CCN

Ever walk into an empty elevator and collide with the overpoweringly sweet smell of perfume...obviously the lingering residue of a former elevator passenger? Or unwrap the Sunday newspaper and have the pervasive odor of a detergent or fabric softener sample hit you before the headlines do?

For most of us, this is just an annoying little tweak, but for a growing number of others, these smells, called "emissions of volatile organic compounds," can be a form of torment that throws their bodies into reactive overdrive. One whiff of a chemical cocktail — coming from not only perfumes and detergents but also construction materials, fabrics, furnishings, cleaning supplies, adhesives, paints, caulks, and paper — can result in a vast array of debilitating symptoms.

For instance, take Mary Smith (this is not her real name as she’s been legally advised not to speak publicly due to events surrounding her condition). She was healthy and athletic and worked as a graphic design artist for twenty years. But ten years ago, at the age of thirty-seven, she suddenly developed hypersensitivity to the chemicals that she used in her graphics business. Today, her reaction to the thousands of manmade chemicals in our environment is so profound that she can’t stand to read a newspaper due to the chemicals in the ink print and bleach in the paper on which its printed. When coming in contact with these and thousands of other synthetic chemicals, she becomes immediately ill with symptoms of burning and tearing eyes, swelling, skin rashes, bleeding sinuses and respiratory failure.

Leaving the confines of her home is an ordeal, and she ventures outside, hooked to an oxygen tank, only when she must carry out what she calls, "activities of daily living," such as buying groceries or going to the doctor. "It doesn’t matter where you go because if they freshly waxed the floor you’re sick. You can go to the bank and if they just refinished the brass on the outside of the building and you walk by [and smell] the lacquer-thinner solvent, you become sick...you’re just knocked off your feet and you’ve got to get home and go to bed."

It would be easy to dismiss her condition as a freak health problem. But hers is not an isolated case. In fact, the number of people plagued with multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) is growing rapidly. And worse, our mainstream medical community, for the most part, doesn’t acknowledge that the condition exists. Yet studies in this country consistently indicate that as much as 36 percent of the population may have MCS. These people are sensitive or highly reactive to chemicals in common products such as paint, pesticides, cleaning products and fragrances. People who complain of this reactivity to their physicians are often told it’s all in their heads and are written prescriptions for antidepressants.

Dr. Marsha Vetter, M.D., holds a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology and is one of the premiere physicians in the country specializing in environmental illness. This specialty is not to be confused with the work of those physicians who treat environmental and occupational illness due to an obvious high-dose chemical exposure such as a chemical spill. What Dr. Vetter treats are those MCS illnesses that frequently arise from cumulative exposure to the more than 80,000 synthetic chemicals circulating in our environment.

Patients from across the country find their way to Dr. Vetter’s suburban Chicago office. According to Dr. Vetter, they have generally seen a multitude of other physicians for symptoms that cannot be explained within the framework of conventional medicine. "Multiple chemical sensitivity is a valid illness," she says. "What tends to happen is that you start out being sensitive to one thing... the things you run into in the course of everyday living but that are chemicals such as auto exhaust, diesel fumes, cigarette smoke and perfumes, ...and then it [the sensitivity] spreads, ... and you start becoming sensitive to all sorts of different things."

Lynn Lawson has written one of the definitive books on the subject, Staying Well in a Toxic World: Understanding Environmental Illness, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, Chemical Injuries, and Sick Building Syndrome. She says that every year there are a thousand new synthetic chemicals introduced into our environment for commercial use and the aroma chemical industry is largely unregulated.

In personal grooming products alone, there are more than 5,000 different fragrances in use. But because chemical formulas of fragrances are considered trade secrets, companies aren’t required to list their ingredients and can label them as containing merely "fragrance."

One commissioned study conducted by an industry lab specializing in fragrance testing analyzed Calvin Klein’s "Eternity" cologne and found forty-one ingredients that were "toxic to the skin, respiratory tract, nervous and reproductive systems, and [in some cases] known to be carcinogens." Testing for respiratory, neurological, and systemic effects are not part of the testing to determine whether fragrance chemicals are safe.

Lawson, who has MCS herself, suggests that those who suspect they may be sensitive should test themselves in a grocery store. "One telltale sign," she says, "is if you walk down the detergent aisle, where it’s mostly new synthetic products [chemicals] in fabric softeners and detergents...and the smell is very pungent and you get a prickling in your nose or a little pain in your head, a weakness in your muscles, a sick feeling in your stomach or nausea or cough or something like that. You can be pretty sure that you’re already chemically sensitive or are on your way to becoming so."

As far as treating MCS illness, Dr. Vetter fortifies her patients with a "clean" whole-foods diet (which we should all be eating anyway!) and various nutritional supplements — particularly those that support liver function. It’s the liver that takes the extreme stress of processing the toxins coming from these chemicals. Interestingly, many MCS patients have difficulty tolerating drugs so Dr. Vetter usually sticks to herbal and nutritional supplements.

She also recommends reducing what is known as "total load." "Total load," she says, "would be everything your body has to deal with that is putting a burden on the immune and detoxification systems...[for example] being in places where there is mold, pollen, dust, cigarette smoke, or where there are people wearing perfumes. Do anything you can to lower the total load and then you can handle the chemicals a lot better."

Unfortunately, Dr. Vetter, Lynn Lawson, and Mary Smith all agree that it can be a challenge to keep chemical smells out of one’s environment, especially in the workplace. While cigarette smoking in the office is usually banned, the ubiquitous use of cologne and perfume is a serious issue for those who have sensitivities. Yet, the three women say it’s an awkward situation to ask people not to wear their fragrances. It can end up causing defensiveness and hard feelings.

If you have found yourself becoming inexplicably ill on a sporadic basis, it might be wise to investigate the possibility of MCS. You may very well save yourself time, frustration, and money by first ruling out the potential of a chemical reactivity. For more information, I suggest you visit this respected Web site on chemical sensitivities: www.fpinva.org.

Disclaimer: This column is for information only and no part of its contents should be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, recommendation or endorsement by Ms. Ephraim.

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