Why air freshners can trigger asthma

They may smell sweet, but popular air fresheners can cause serious lung
problems.

That’s the message from a new study presented over the weekend at the annual meeting of
the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI). Home fragrance
products often contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that include such nasty
chemicals as formalehyde, petroleum distillates, limonene, esters and alcohols.
(Download a copy of the presentation here)

Exposures to such VOCs — even at levels below currently accepted safety
recommendations — can increase the risk of asthma in kids. That’s because VOCs
can trigger eye and respiratory tract irritation, headaches and dizziness, as
Dr. Stanley Fineman, ACAAI president-elect, pointed out:

This is a much bigger problem than people realize. About 20 percent of the
population and 34 percent of people with asthma report health problems from air
fresheners. We know air freshener fragrances can trigger allergy symptoms,
aggravate existing allergies and worsen asthma.

MORE: 5 Ways Americans’ Allergies Are Getting Worse

And if you hope that “all-natural” fragrance products can give you a nice
scent without the chemicals, Fineman has bad news for you — even products
marketed as organic tend to have hazardous chemicals. That shouldn’t be
surprising since fragrance products don’t eliminate bad smells; they just cover
them up, and that usually requires something strong.

Fineman suggests that you’d be better off simply opening up your window and
letting fresh air in — though that advice might not work well where I live.

MORE: Environmental Toxins Cost Billions in Childhood Disease

The study also gives some much-needed attention to
the problem of indoor air pollution. While air freshener-related asthma is
certainly a health hindrance in the developed world — at least among those who
like to live in artificially sweet-smelling homes — indoor air pollution is a
major health catastrophe for much of the developing world, one that leads
to the premature deaths of nearly 2 million people a year according to the
World Health Organization. The majority of those affected are very poor women
and children who might spent hours cooking food over a wood-burning fire in a
hut with little ventilation.

One solution would be to supply cleaner cookstoves
that might burn biogas with far less smoke. That’s one health intervention that
would save lives at an incredibly low cost— almost certainly less than the $8.3
billion in revenue the global air fragrance industry is expected to earn by
2015.

Bryan Walsh is a senior writer at TIME Magazine.