“Air Fresheners” rank right up there with leaded gas, asbestos brake pads, and coal plants: two decades from now we’ll look back with regret and astonishment at how stupid and irresponsible an idea it was. Deliberate inhalation of hormone-disrupting, liver-abusing, likely carcinogenic poisons, all in the name of smelling like a pine forest glade. Inane.
I’d argue the other three at least have highly functional qualities and are likely the best functioning alternatives (on at least some dimensions) at the time of introduction in a way/to a degree that air fresheners are not.
A pot on the stove with lemon, vanilla, or cinnamon or some actual flowers/pine seem to be perfectly reasonable substitutes for the air fresheners.
>“Air Fresheners” rank right up there with leaded gas, asbestos brake pads, and coal plants: two decades from now we’ll look back...
If asbestos and lead are any indication I'm sure joe blow in 20yr will be writing long Reddit and HN rants about how <insert carcinogenic air freshener chemical you shouldn't atomize in an enclosed space> is nothing but pure evil and the CEOs of <insert company> should be lined up and shot for using it in <insert industrial application where there are so many more poisonous contaminants about that a little lead in your bearing surfaces or asbestos in your insulating materials doesn't make the environment any more hazardous>.
Carbon scrubbers are the healthy, bulletproof solution to eliminating stubborn odors in the home. Not the tiny little activated charcoal sheets that are in some air purifiers, they are too small to do that much, I'm talking about the cylindrical ones made for indoor marijuana grows. I used to live in a small NYC apartment with a cat. You could not smell any pet smell once I got a carbon scrubber going in there. If you get a decent variable speed fan it's going to be no louder than a regular consumer air purifier. If your only concern is odor, it's going to be more cost effective in the long run than an air purifier too.
Any recommendations on affordable ones? I love my cats but you are spot on about the smell, I currently use the plug in air fresheners when I have company but take them out as soon as they leave.
My mother was one of the super skeptical types, so she wouldn’t allow the plug in fresheners in the house (or the spray kind either) — it was open windows, sunlight, and very limited cleaning products. I’m pretty thankful about that skepticism and intend to keep that momentum when I have kids.
My mum was the same, including with plastic food containers. Turns out those are really bad as well. It’s also amazing how we continue to use products knowing they are toxic.
My parents consciously moved away from the city and big roads to have their kids.
Which I reversed in my infinite 20 something wisdom.
If you ever experience a skin condition that seemingly won't go away and is surprisingly painful, you'll get hip to the scam that are cleaning products quite quickly.
They can all be made at home, with 3 or 4 ingredients. The supplies will last a lifetime and you don't produce any non recyclable plastic bottles (another scam!).
> Natural essential oils, for example, can be used to make safe home scenting products, such as “DIY” scented candles.
This sentence comes after a one sentence gap from a paragraph warning that the plug-ins contain volatile organic compounds(VOCs). Natural essential oils also contain VOCs. It’s how you smell them.
Burning candles also releases VOCs (and soot) into the air. My old roommate was a daily candle burner, and the walls in her bedroom ended up absolutely covered in soot after a few years.
Not only that, many (but not all) essential oils are very toxic to cats and maybe other pets too - blanketly calling them "safe" is just plain wrong. Like very, very wrong.
It's probably not a good idea to diffuse essential oils in general, they are VOCs after all, but it's an especially bad idea if you have pets.
Don't use candle essential oil diffusers. Candles burn too hot and burn the things you don't want to burn. There are electricly heated diffusers that warm up the oil to a lower temperature. But, don't use essential oil diffusers if you have pets. Pets can be extremely sensitive to essential oils and some are toxic to some pets while safe to humans. There are ways to treat pets with essential oils, but the process is very delicate. You essentially open a bottle and put it at a distance from your pet. If the pet approaches it himself and shows signs of liking it, you can look into ways of incorporating some of this oil into pet's life, but gently so as to not overwhelm him. For human use, just smell it out of the bottle or rub it on specific points on your body. Look up relevant literature for details. Most important thing is that just by smelling it you can immediately tell if that specific essential oil is good for you. Don't use them just because someone said they're beneficial.
The article mentions a study conducted by the Nation Resources Defence Council (NRDC), I think this is the study report with more details, including detected concentrations: https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/airfresheners.pdf
I have always wondered why these things are a allowed to be called "Air Fresheners". They don't make the air fresher, they mask bad odors, so they should be called Air Scenters. I've always felt a bit alone in this but I much prefer a bit of residual faecal scent left by a ventilation system than the heavy blanked smell of an Air "Freshener", I could only imagine what filth it was hiding. These things are the cheap alternative to true fresh(er) air.
> They don't make the air fresher, they mask bad odors
I read a little while ago there are some which just add scent to mask the smell, but others have a doughnut shaped molecule which captures the smelly molecule. It doesn't 'clean' as such and does nothing to stop the source of the smell though so perhaps calling it masking is correct.
I don't know enough about the specific science of cyclodextrin, I've put a couple of links below.
https://www.direct365.co.uk/blog/how-air-fresheners-work/
> The key to odour eliminating air fresheners is a molecule called cyclodextrin. This is a donut shaped molecule suspended in a water carrier. Due to cyclodextrin’s hydrophobic interior, it attracts the odour molecules in the air. As the water dries, the molecules on the interior of the cyclodextrin are encapsulated inside, therefore reducing their volatility and minimising their smell.
https://helix.northwestern.edu/blog/2015/06/take-whiff-chemi...
> When you spray Febreze the hydrophobic cavity of the β-cyclodextrin traps these volatile, odor causing molecules, preventing the molecules from binding to the odor receptors in your nose
This article might be completely factually correct but its overall quality is pretty bad. It doesn't tell you whether these chemicals are found in the liquid, in the vapor, or in both. No exploration of what the vaporization process does to these chemicals or whether there are types of plug-in fresheners that don't contain hazardous chemicals. No attempt to quantify what is and isn't a dangerous concentration. If my brother keeps one in his closed bathroom do I need to wake him up to yank it out? If I only have one freshener and it's in the big living room is it safe? Are there any filtration or neutralization methods that let users keep most of the scent while being safer?
Then the big question, are scented candles just as bad?
This is a kernel of good info but damn it could've been so much better.
Lots of answers to your questions aren't available.
Safe concentrations of many things aren't known for humans, because studying them is very difficult (effects over many decades, ethics problems with experimenting on people)
These things have always been pretty obviously uncomfortable for me to be around, since way before I've come across research like this. Have you considered that your body just doesn't have the capacity to notice it? A poor sense of smell is possible, and is a risk factor for many things.
The cheap ones are all petroleum-based, and if you get an unscented one you can really tell. Gross. Cheap scented ones still smell of it, even. Beeswax smells nice, even unscented, but is really expensive (if you're using them more than occasionally). Soy's OK and priced in between. A little harder to find than the petroleum ones, but that's not an issue if you're shopping online.
Anyway, as another poster noted, rarely is anything burning healthy to be around, even if it smells nice.
Just as toxic if not worse is laundry detergent and especially fabric softener (scented of course).
Here is a list of just SOME of the toxic chemicals found in commercial fabric softeners:
Alpha Terpineol: can cause central nervous damage and respiratory problems
Camphor: causes central nervous disorders, is easily absorbed through skin
Chloroform: a carcinogenic neurotoxin preferred by Ted Bundy
Benzyl Acetate: linked to pancreatic cancer
Benyl Alcohol: respiratory tract irritant
Ethanol: on the EPA’s “hazardous waste” list, can cause central nervous system disorders
Ethyl Acetate: a narcotic on the EPA’s “hazardous waste” list
Limonene: a known carcinogen that irritates eyes and skin
Linalool: causes central nervous system disorders and depresses heart activity
Alle Ding sind Gift und nichts ohn' Gift; allein die Dosis macht, das ein Ding kein Gift ist.
Camphor occurs naturally in the tree from which it takes its name, and also basil and rosemary naturally contain it in large quantities. Its lethal dose is reasonably small, under a gram for children, but its pungent odor seems to prevent most poisonings, and it seems to have no cumulative toxicity despite widespread use as an inhalant (for example, to alleviate symptoms of colds). A typical case report reads:
> A 3-year-old girl ingested 700 mg camphor from 1 tablespoon of Vicks VapoRub (R). This product had also been placed in her nostrils twice daily for 5 months. Grand-mal seizures occurred 2 h after ingestion. Coma and respiratory depression lasted 21 h. Full recovery ensued (Phelan, 1976).
Benzyl acetate and benzyl alcohol are produced naturally by jasmine flowers (they're the major constituent of their scent) and the ylang-ylang tree. Benzyl alcohol is also a constituent of castoreum. It can also strip the paint off your walls and destroy your corneas.
Chloroform is produced by many kinds of seaweed, perhaps by soil fungus, and in abundance by chlorinated drinking water.
Most of the other toxic chemicals here have been covered by other posters.
Ethanol, though, that's a huge social problem; aside from the cognitive impairments it's best known for, it may be the single chemical poison responsible for the largest number of yearly human deaths due to its addictive nature. Fortunately, the amount used in fabric softeners is typically about a thousandth of the dose needed to produce toxic effects.
I've learned to avoid using fabric softener, but any time I'm exposed to it (in other people's houses), I get a frightening lung reaction; some wheezing initially, then my chest seizes up making me feel like I can barely breathe at all. I think it's a protective anxiety reaction to warn me to avoid it, rather than an actual dangerous allergic reaction, but there's something about it my body really doesn't like. I don't have any other allergies or asthma normally these days; I had dust/mite-related asthma as a child but have mostly grown out of it. That fabric softener reaction is the only reaction of that kind I've noticed in about the past 15 years.
[+] [-] moistly|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sokoloff|5 years ago|reply
A pot on the stove with lemon, vanilla, or cinnamon or some actual flowers/pine seem to be perfectly reasonable substitutes for the air fresheners.
[+] [-] throwaway0a5e|5 years ago|reply
If asbestos and lead are any indication I'm sure joe blow in 20yr will be writing long Reddit and HN rants about how <insert carcinogenic air freshener chemical you shouldn't atomize in an enclosed space> is nothing but pure evil and the CEOs of <insert company> should be lined up and shot for using it in <insert industrial application where there are so many more poisonous contaminants about that a little lead in your bearing surfaces or asbestos in your insulating materials doesn't make the environment any more hazardous>.
[+] [-] koolba|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grumpyautist|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bootlooped|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zircom|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fedreserved|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] cassonmars|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PurpleFoxy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hedberg10|5 years ago|reply
Which I reversed in my infinite 20 something wisdom.
If you ever experience a skin condition that seemingly won't go away and is surprisingly painful, you'll get hip to the scam that are cleaning products quite quickly.
They can all be made at home, with 3 or 4 ingredients. The supplies will last a lifetime and you don't produce any non recyclable plastic bottles (another scam!).
[+] [-] clumsysmurf|5 years ago|reply
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181017211703.h...
[+] [-] brandonmenc|5 years ago|reply
Couldn't figure out what the problem was, but eventually tracked it down to the plug-in air freshener next to her perch.
Got rid of it and the bloodwork started coming back normal almost instantly.
[+] [-] computator|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dnh44|5 years ago|reply
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/28/14000-people-may...
[+] [-] CoolGuySteve|5 years ago|reply
It's really amazing to me that "how do you clean this fucking thing?" is such a nebulous concept for the engineers of these devices.
[+] [-] 01100011|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] post_break|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sokoloff|5 years ago|reply
This sentence comes after a one sentence gap from a paragraph warning that the plug-ins contain volatile organic compounds(VOCs). Natural essential oils also contain VOCs. It’s how you smell them.
[+] [-] astura|5 years ago|reply
Not only that, many (but not all) essential oils are very toxic to cats and maybe other pets too - blanketly calling them "safe" is just plain wrong. Like very, very wrong.
It's probably not a good idea to diffuse essential oils in general, they are VOCs after all, but it's an especially bad idea if you have pets.
[+] [-] kragen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmos62|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teekert|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Steve44|5 years ago|reply
I read a little while ago there are some which just add scent to mask the smell, but others have a doughnut shaped molecule which captures the smelly molecule. It doesn't 'clean' as such and does nothing to stop the source of the smell though so perhaps calling it masking is correct.
I don't know enough about the specific science of cyclodextrin, I've put a couple of links below.
https://www.direct365.co.uk/blog/how-air-fresheners-work/ > The key to odour eliminating air fresheners is a molecule called cyclodextrin. This is a donut shaped molecule suspended in a water carrier. Due to cyclodextrin’s hydrophobic interior, it attracts the odour molecules in the air. As the water dries, the molecules on the interior of the cyclodextrin are encapsulated inside, therefore reducing their volatility and minimising their smell.
https://helix.northwestern.edu/blog/2015/06/take-whiff-chemi... > When you spray Febreze the hydrophobic cavity of the β-cyclodextrin traps these volatile, odor causing molecules, preventing the molecules from binding to the odor receptors in your nose
[+] [-] londons_explore|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gher-shyu3i|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dvh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kwhitefoot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Causality1|5 years ago|reply
Then the big question, are scented candles just as bad?
This is a kernel of good info but damn it could've been so much better.
[+] [-] londons_explore|5 years ago|reply
Safe concentrations of many things aren't known for humans, because studying them is very difficult (effects over many decades, ethics problems with experimenting on people)
[+] [-] rentzsch|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] gh-throw|5 years ago|reply
Anyway, as another poster noted, rarely is anything burning healthy to be around, even if it smells nice.
[+] [-] neolog|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] culturestate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dnndev|5 years ago|reply
Here is a list of just SOME of the toxic chemicals found in commercial fabric softeners:
Alpha Terpineol: can cause central nervous damage and respiratory problems Camphor: causes central nervous disorders, is easily absorbed through skin Chloroform: a carcinogenic neurotoxin preferred by Ted Bundy Benzyl Acetate: linked to pancreatic cancer Benyl Alcohol: respiratory tract irritant Ethanol: on the EPA’s “hazardous waste” list, can cause central nervous system disorders Ethyl Acetate: a narcotic on the EPA’s “hazardous waste” list Limonene: a known carcinogen that irritates eyes and skin Linalool: causes central nervous system disorders and depresses heart activity
[+] [-] kragen|5 years ago|reply
Camphor occurs naturally in the tree from which it takes its name, and also basil and rosemary naturally contain it in large quantities. Its lethal dose is reasonably small, under a gram for children, but its pungent odor seems to prevent most poisonings, and it seems to have no cumulative toxicity despite widespread use as an inhalant (for example, to alleviate symptoms of colds). A typical case report reads:
> A 3-year-old girl ingested 700 mg camphor from 1 tablespoon of Vicks VapoRub (R). This product had also been placed in her nostrils twice daily for 5 months. Grand-mal seizures occurred 2 h after ingestion. Coma and respiratory depression lasted 21 h. Full recovery ensued (Phelan, 1976).
Benzyl acetate and benzyl alcohol are produced naturally by jasmine flowers (they're the major constituent of their scent) and the ylang-ylang tree. Benzyl alcohol is also a constituent of castoreum. It can also strip the paint off your walls and destroy your corneas.
Chloroform is produced by many kinds of seaweed, perhaps by soil fungus, and in abundance by chlorinated drinking water.
Most of the other toxic chemicals here have been covered by other posters.
Ethanol, though, that's a huge social problem; aside from the cognitive impairments it's best known for, it may be the single chemical poison responsible for the largest number of yearly human deaths due to its addictive nature. Fortunately, the amount used in fabric softeners is typically about a thousandth of the dose needed to produce toxic effects.
[+] [-] 01100011|5 years ago|reply
Benzyl Alcohol is in many plants and foods.
Ethanol is, well, ethanol.
Ethyl Acetate is found in many alcoholic beverages and is a simple ester of ethanol and acetic acid(vinegar).
Limonene is orange oil, found in citrus peels.
Linalool is found in many spices and flowers.
I'm not sure if you're seriously trying to scare people or making a sarcastic 'di-hydrogen monoxide' style joke.
[+] [-] tomhoward|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mindslight|5 years ago|reply
And with that you've demonstrated that your entire list isn't likely to be grounded in reality.