One of the big toxic offenders is perfume and other scented products. Did you know that many of the ingredients in your perfume are the exact same ingredients found in gasoline???!! The scary thing is that the perfume industry is not regulated at all, and they can put any number of chemicals in fragrance without revealing what those chemicals are, and how they affect humans. We humans are all participating in a giant “lab” experiment against our knowledge and against our will, and it is making some of us very sick.
{“Multiple Chemical Sensitivity - Environmental Illness,” www.ourlittleplace.com place.com - April 2002}

Fragrance-free policies are beginning to take hold in work places across the United States and Canada. Here are just a few examples:

• Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, asked its employees and students to refrain voluntarily from wearing scented products.
• The entire Halifax Regional Municipality in Nova Scotia has a “scent-awareness” program that urges the use of unscented products only.
• Alacrity Ventures, a Berkeley, California-based venture-capital firm, not only encourages its employees to go fragrance-free but also uses only unscented janitorial products.

Many businesses, at the request of their employees, are voluntarily creating fragrance-free policies, says Tracie Saab, a consultant with the “Job Accommodation Network,” a Morgantown, West Virginia group that educates disabled workers and their employers. These policies are applauded by people with asthma, allergies, and the controversial disorder called multiple chemical sensitivity, in which even low levels of exposure to chemicals (from pesticides to perfumes) can trigger headaches, fatigue and other symptoms. “It is easier for businesses to enact these policies than to risk legal action somewhere down the line,” says Saab.
{“Stink-Free Office Mates,” Natural Health, Nov./Dec. 2000}