OT: alcohol based perfume removal?

I have tried calling the manufacturers. They won't answer you as they think your are about to sue them and they really just don't care. Tide for example.

I am after getting other people chemicals out of my cloths. I have tried stuff for hunters and it does not work.

That use to work, until they came up with these new persistent chemicals

Hi Carlos,

Oh lord! What makes you think I would use these chemicals? My house is totally unscented.

I am picking them up from other people's houses and businesses.

-T

Forbes did an article about 40 years ago about that. The new fragrances are meant to be remembered. The easiest way is for them to be "offensive".

I remember walking down a business hallway and remarking "Did someone spray for ants?" and a secretary proudly announced "It is my new perfume! It is called 'Poison'!" And yes, I remembered it.

Some still smell good. Most now smell like roach spray or the sweat off a pig. We call it "dress for success perfume" because women dressed in business suites are the worst offenders.

To those that are sensitive, your deodorant does bother them, especially Brute. Your hand lotion, hand soap, shampoo, shaving lotion, hand sanitize too.

Keep in mine that your nose can only smell differences, so you quickly get immune to the smell and can't tell it is there. To add insult to injury, some folks keep adding perfume some they can smell it again, not to mention "layering" perfumes.

Consider using White Vinegar as your deodorant. No toxic chemicals in it and it works really well.

A "minority for sure, but not a "tiny minority". And corporations could come up with stinks that are non-toxic if they wanted to. But those cost more money.

I hate to say it, but when dealing with large corporations, they are neither moral nor immoral. They are "amoral". All that matters is the number at the bottom line of their spreadsheet. It is the job of lawyers to tilt that number towards them using nontoxic scents.

Or our neighbors could give a damn about the affect on those around them and stop purchasing those products. That would tilt the number on the bottom line in a hell of a hurry.

Unfortunately, most do not give a damn if their neighbor has to leave the grocery store gasping in terror trying to breath and could not purchase food.

I just posted over there.

I originally searched for it in subscriptions, but I typed out "chemistry" and could not find it. Thank you!

I once had to threaten a neighbour with calling in the Public Health department when they refused to stop using excessive amounts of perfume that kept blowing into my house.

I've had that too. I finished up begging my neighbour to redirect their dryer exhaust or use something unperfumed, but she adamantly refused. Her husband came round apologising, but it was no use, he couldn't get her to stop either and I lost two years of being able to work in my garden until they moved away.

A lot of 'public health' advice was distributed by women's magazines and they were paid for by the perfume advertising. You could not have got the message out even if people had been dying at the rate of hundreds a week.

I cannot drive my van in the Bath Clean Air Zone without a heavy penalty, but I can't use buses as an alternative because there might be someone on board wearing perfume. There are no regulations about shops pumping out perfume and the Council has already told me they can't do anything to stop that unless I live in the same street as the shop.

The "Clean Air Zone" doesn't extend to perfume in shops and buses, yet far more people are ill because of perfume than because of diesel fumes (but diesel fumes are easier to measure and vehicle owners are 'soft' targets).

The search term is fabric softener.

sci.chem is one of the very old foundation groups hence the short name. chemistry was one letter too long for its own good back in the day.

Try Google groups "Uncle Al" and your topic and you might just get something. He was in his day very very smart and knowledgeable. It's rather quiet there now. You don't get many random nutters posting about chemistry (they are all posting in the sci.astro .physics sub groups).

That's an interesting concept. I suspect it is not a valid argument in general, but it is certainly not a valid argument for causing harm to yourself and to your family. You can change jobs if nothing else.

I think you are going to have a hard time showing any harm from your neighbor's dryer exhaust vent.

Having asthma does not equate to being sensitive to perfumes. There may be a correlation, but how strong?

Maybe the easy path is to wear a set of coveralls for work and not bring them into the home?

They may be problematic, but the reference you provide doesn't say they are "toxic". "Toxic - Capable of causing injury or death, especially by chemical means". I don't see any mention of death or serious injury, at least unless you are handling the stuff. What we are talking about here is equivalent to second hand smoke. It's hard to apply the term "toxic".

But maybe I'm just not that sensitive.

Interesting question, why does chemistry not attract as many as physics and EE for that matter? Like claiming they've created the ultimate grape flavor or a cream that cures pattern baldness in 100% of cases?

Maybe the initial educational and equipment outlay is too high for it to appeal much to kooks, you can learn enough physics in not too long to kinda sound like you know what you're talking about to laypeople, but research chemistry seems like you need at least a few years of serious study before you can even bullshit effectively. And many thousands of dollars of lab equipment and a place to put it before you could do even basic experiments.

Or perhaps it just doesn't seem as glamorous, most people could name some physicists and engineers who achieved fame for world-changing discoveries but naming some famous chemists might be more difficult for a layperson

I don't know exactly why. But astronomy attracts nutters with NEW THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE (all in caps) and physics EINSTEIN WAS WRONG (likewise).

There is the odd nutter posts irregularly to sci.chem (omnilobe) with his crank theory of the periodic table. Archimedes Plutonium used to be the most prolific back in the day when it was more popular:

Not really. You can have a decent home chemical laboratory for not that much outlay - although these days owning such kit might well be frowned on by the authorities. In my youth I was quite good at pyrotechnics formulations and glow in the dark writing (cyalume glostick patent).

Einstein and now Hawking have popularised science in a way that has made people think that any word salad they put together is just as valid. :( A wise publisher once told him that you will lose half your potential audience with each equation that you put into a popular science book.

Brian Cox (and Jim Al Kalihli for chemistry) have too in a Carl Sagan sort of way, but at least they have got people talking about real hard sciences (and made science cool again). Odd that both are particle physicists but they have a serious media presence and their popular science programmes are generally made to a high standard. More like Horizon used to be before it was terminally dumbed down.

Apart from soap vendor Lush (which I avoid like the plague) I can't think of any other shops in the UK that have sufficient fragrance in their air to ever cause me a problem.

As a child I would struggle in department store perfume sections and in smoke filled rooms but I eventually grew out of it and can tolerate some tobacco smoke now. Even so I still find that tobacco smoke is by far the most offensive smell that sticks to my clothes.

These days public indoor spaces are all smoke free so it's not a problem any more but outdoors I can smell a smoker or vaper from over 10m away downwind. I presume that the same probably applies to any Covid viruses they might exhale too.

Gregs shops have a baking bread smell pumped into the air that isn't entirely natural (and a lot of processed foods flavourings do too).

The smells you are complaining about are designed to bind to the fabrics during washing and then release into the air very slowly. Fragrances are detectable as smells in ultra trace amounts (way too low to be toxic).

H2S of rotten eggs for instance really is toxic (more so than hydrogen cyanide) but is a very obvious smell from about 10ppb to 1ppm and then changes perceived smell as it swamps olefactory sensors beyond 100ppm you stop being able to smell it and then stop completely not long after.

When your lips start to turn blue, you will get more sensitive.

And when their house gets hot, they open their windows and share with the neighborhood all the plug in air fresheners.

Public Health does not give a ...