Question from HEG
Debra,
We have been searching for a new rental home in Miami for months now. We have so many environmental criteria and as a result it has been hard to find the perfect place. We finally found one with tile and hard wood floors (no carpet or laminate), no pesticides used, no new paint, not a new building, a non-smoker currently lives there, etc. Our only problems are that the current tennant uses a lot of artificial fragrance products – many candles, incense burners, glade plug-ins, fabreeze, etc. It is truly overpowering! My question is whether the dangers of these products will be gone once she vacates, and we have the place ventilated and thoroughly cleaned with green cleaning products (including a vapurclean treatment all over), or will the toxins linger? We have an infant so we want to be sure.
Also, is there any danger from using a clothes dryer that someone has previously used fragranced dryer shhets in?
Thank you for your feedback!
Debra’s Answer
Ideally, I would say err on the side of caution, but the house does sound perfect in other ways.
I can’t guarantee you can remove this fragrance. I’ve never personally tried to do that.
Readers, what is your experience with this? Any successful actions?
I had a similar situation. We spent MONTHS airing out the new house and had the EnviroKlenz filters (in our HVAC and their own portable unit) running round the clock for a very long time with no improvement. My body was the tester…every time we thought we had the house “clean,” I would spend a night there, and every time I woke up with severe allergic reactions. Only now, after having had the entire house (ceilings, walls, floors) professional washed with TSP and then repainted/sealed with Debra-approved paints AND having replaced all of the furniture, linens, window dressings, etc., can my body tolerate the house. It was an expensive and time consuming job, but it is possible.
Thanks for sharing exactly what you did and that it worked.
U have 2 small bathrooms i have been burning same fragdance candles for over 15 years and now the bathrooms smell simi la r to these candles kind of gassy is it possible that these candles scents have been absorbed into the sheetrock and ceiling which is causing this post
Yes.
If the smell of smoke (from cigarettes, etc.) can be absorbed into the drywall of homes and linger, I would think the same would apply to those artificial fragrances such as plug-ins. They are so horrible. I used to visit a doctor’s office who had plug in’s in his office and every time I came back home, my purse (made of fabric material) would real of it after being in his office for about one hour or so. And this was at a doctors office who practices functional medicine and offers nutritional IV treatments for patients (which chemically-sensitive patients may need from time to time).
Yes, the smell on and in my purse would go away after awhile, but I was only there for a short time. I wouldn’t want to think about how much gets absorbed into the walls of a place that uses it all the time. I saw it once used in a small waiting room of a major hospital in South Florida (in the outpatient lab area).
That type of artificial fragrance should be banned as far as I’m concerned.
Your logic is correct and I agree. Fragrances should be banned.
Cary, I live in South Florida – who is the functional medicine dr. you go /or went to? Our mcs dr. closed his practice a few years ago due to illness, and all of us are looking for another dr. who knows of mcs. thank you.