On Monday, the LA Times posted the following article, which must have cut like a knife through the entire contemporary fragrance industry: Lawsuit settlement means no more perfume, aftershave or other scents for Detroit city workers — “Change is in the air for Detroit city workers. Officials plan to place warning placards in three city buildings. The signs will warn workers to avoid ‘wearing scented products, including … colognes, aftershave lotions, perfumes, deodorants, body/face lotions … (and) the use of scented candles, perfume samples from magazines, spray or solid air fresheners’ . . . The Detroit News reports the move stems from a $100,000 settlement in a federal lawsuit filed in 2008 by a city employee who said a colleague’s perfume made it challenging for her to do her job.”
Which just goes to show that no matter how tightly the IFRA (International Fragrance Association) self-regulates the “allergen” quotient in fragrances and scented products, it will never be enough to satisfy everyone.
Smell Psychologist Dr. Avery Gilbert mentions on his website that “claims (about fragrance in the workplace) brought under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) have usually been rejected. Detroit should appeal — but they’re so strapped for cash the relatively puny $100K settlement probably looked like a bargain. Result: Another incremental loss of freedom.”
A separate Yahoo! News article on the subject mentions that the city of Detroit fought the suit, but eventually settled and implemented the judges instructions regarding the posting of signs asking city employees to refrain from using scented products.
Ann Curry Thompson, the attorney for the plaintiff, argued that bringing awareness to the potential problems of perfume and scented products in the workplace is like the campaign to prohibit smoking on the job — that the use of fragrances can be “debilitating” to some individuals with asthma.
The problem with this argument is that people with asthma can react negatively to an array of odorants, whether they’re synthetic or 100% natural, from glass cleaners, carpet glue and paint fumes to trees, grasses, weeds and dust mites (WebMD states that 80% of asthma sufferers respond with allergic asthma to natural airborne substances), so it’s disingenuous to place perfume and room fresheners on the same health-threat level as cigarette smoke, especially when trees, grasses and family pets are more common asthma triggers than the majority of compounds used in contemporary fragrance.
*Note: I certainly don’t hear Ms. Thompson clamoring for the banning of trees, grasses and dog parks, though I wouldn’t be surprised if that were on the agenda.
It’s estimated that asthma sufferers comprise about 5.5% of the total U.S. population (17 million out of 309 million) — this includes children too young to work, an increasing number of retired senior citizens and the otherwise unemployed due to economic conditions, which puts the number of actual workers afflicted with allergic asthma at a very low percentage of the workforce. This begs the question: is it necessary that an entire city’s workplace change to benefit a slim minority of workers with allergic asthma, or are the workers with asthma better served by identifying specific personal triggers (a particular stainless steel cleaner or a co-worker’s perfume, for instance) and dealing with those triggers on an individual basis?
Not every fragrance product is an asthma trigger, and it should be considered a plus to encourage people in the workplace to hammer out mutually agreeable solutions to their problems, even if management needs to get involved.
Ms. Thompson states that it’s “unfair” that asthma sufferers should have to approach co-workers one on one to deal with possible problems over fragrance triggers, yet one unhappy worker forcing a citywide ban on the use of scented products in the workplace strikes me as more than a bit “unfair” itself, especially when scented products quite possibly offer broad-ranging psychological benefits for the general workplace population.
For example: 1.) according to one study, clean scents (such as L’eau Serge Lutens) might possibly promote altruistic behavior; 2.) Japanese scientists have reported that inhaling certain fragrances alters gene activity and blood chemistry in ways that can reduce workday stress levels; and 3.) the Social Issues Research Center published The Smell Report which states that, according to experiments involving odorless placebos vs. actual odorants, “the actual smell can have dramatic effects in improving our mood and sense of well-being . . . pleasant fragrances have been found to have positive effects on mood in all age groups.”
The Smell Report also sheds some light on scent and its positive role in the workplace: “Experiments have shown that exposure to pleasant fragrances significantly enhances performance on work-related tasks. In particular, ‘arousing’ fragrances such as peppermint, which increase alertness, have been found to improve performance.”
Along these same lines, a study conducted by Susan S. Schiffman, Mark S. Suggs and Elizabeth A. Sattely-Miller came to the conclusion that daily use of cologne improved the mood of middle-aged men, having “significant” positive impact relating to factors of tension, depression, anger, fatigue, and confusion; an Ohio State University research project provided “robust evidence” that odorants (in this case, lemon oil) reliably enhance positive mood; a study at the University of Central Lancashire showed that odors can potentially be used to exert positive influences on human behavior; and a test program by sports supplement company Inhalex showed a significant positive correlation between specially manufactured scents and improved athletic performance: “Inhaling the proprietary scents were shown to produce physiological and psychological changes in the participants. Measurable improvement in the athletes’ performance, motivation, ease of breathing, energy, speed, alertness, reaction time, confidence and strength were validated.”
Additionally, a 1998 article by Kyle Roderick for Third Age News (a Baby Boomer news service) reported this positive finding regarding scent as a stress reliever: “Several hospitals around the United States, including New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, have successfully used scents, such as heliotropin, lavender and vanilla, to reduce
anxiety before and during MRI scans.”
So is it right that workers with asthma can use the ADA to trump the psychological and potentially physical benefits of fragrance and fragrance products for their co-workers? And alternatively, can a worker who suffers from depression or low endurance use the ADA to force a reversal of the scent ban, thereby allowing him/her to use scented products in the workplace as a means of stress relief, mood elevation and endurance boost?
If one person’s individual asthma trigger is another person’s means for improved mood and performance, perhaps the best response to fragrance in the workplace is not a blanket ban on fragrance products, but rather, what attorney Ann Curry Thompson calls the “unfair” solution — that dreaded conversation between adults where a workable compromise might very well, and very easily, be achieved.
Unfortunately for the city workers in Detroit, this option has been taken off their table.
