My guest today is Alison Johnson, Chairperson of the Board of The Chemical Sensitivity Foundation. We’ll be talking about something that affects the health of everyone: exposure to toxic chemicals in fragrances in the workplace and how your can eliminate the fragrance hazard from your workplace. Alison is a summa cum laude graduate of Carleton College and studied mathematics at the Sorbonne on a National Science Foundation Fellowship. She received a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, where she studied on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. In 2010 she received a Distinguished Achievement Award from Carleton College for her work on chemical sensitivity. Alison has produced and directed documentaries titled Multiple Chemical Sensitivity: How Chemical Exposures May Be Affecting Your Health; Gulf War Syndrome: Aftermath of a Toxic Battlefield; The Toxic Clouds of 9/11: A Looming Health Disaster; and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity: A Life-Altering Condition. Alison’s books about chemical sensitivity are Casualties of Progress: Personal Histories from the Chemically Sensitive; Gulf War Syndrome: Legacy of a Perfect War; and Amputated Lives: Coping with Chemical Sensitivity. www.chemicalsensitivityfoundation.org/fragrance-free-workplaces.html
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO How to Have a Fragrance-free Workplace
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd Guest: Alison Johnson
Date of Broadcast: March 10, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free. It’s Tuesday, March 10th, 2015 and we’re going to be talking today about something that affects the health of everyone.
We’re all exposed to it and we’re all affected by it. And that is the exposure to toxic chemicals in fragrances. And specifically, we’re going to talk about being exposed to toxic chemicals in fragrances in the workplace because you go to work and you get exposed to all these things that you may be able to control at home. But what do you do at work?
What do you do about fragrances? What do you do about cigarette smokes? What do you do about cleaning products? Well, today we’re going to talk about Fragrances, How You Can Control Your Workplace, what you can do so that you can have a fragrance-free workplace. And that could apply then to all other types of toxic exposures you might have at your workplace as well.
My guest today is Alison Johnson. She’s the Chairperson of the Board of The Chemical Sensitivity Foundation. She knows all about this. And I want to say that the Chemical Sensitivity Foundation has a lot of information about chemical sensitivity and about this subject in particular. If you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, I have put the link to the exact webpage on their site where she just has a whole list of links relating to the subject that we’re going to be talking about today.
It’s just a wonderful resource for this exact subject. And if you want to go to their website, it’s ChemicalSensitivityFoundation.org.
Hi, Alison.
ALISON JOHNSON: Hello.
DEBRA: You have a lot of experience. I should also say that you produced and directed some documentaries, you’ve written books about chemical sensitivity. So tell us, how did you find out about chemical sensitivity and what is your experience with it that led you then to start this foundation and getting us to today’s topic of fragrance-free?
ALISON JOHNSON: Well, it all started years ago. When I was 35 years old, I suddenly started having migraine headaches. I never had them before. I was very quickly able to trace some to exposure to cigarette smoke. If someone had organized [inaudible 00:03:33], the committee was meeting in my kitchen in the evenings occasionally, I find out the next morning, about 12 hours later, after someone has smoked a lot in my kitchen, I have a migraine.
So I then pretty quickly saw that migraines were caused by exposure to cigarette smoke. I did find that occasionally, after I eliminated my exposure to cigarette smoke, I found that caffeine could also trigger a migraine in me. But I haven’t had migraines in over 35 years. I only had them for two years.
So I’m very much of the opinion that there are a lot of people, there are very specific triggers for migraines – not those standard red wine, chocolate, et cetera, that people list, but it can be very individual for every person. I would get headaches from chocolates. But at any rate, I think that there are many people living with…
DEBRA: And at least chocolate is worth eating.
ALISON JOHNSON: But I think a lot of people are suffering from migraines that [inaudible 00:04:43]. I also discovered that same time when I suddenly started getting the migraines, that year, I started having joint pain for when I wake up in the morning.
And it would be hard to [inaudible 00:04:58]. I have pain on my knees going down the stairs. I was able to trace that quite quickly to the fact that our furnace had just [inaudible 00:05:12]. It just gone on for the fall. And so we did change our heating system. We got an electric boiler to keep the water for our radiators. I never again had any arthritic symptoms.
To say over 35 years, I’ve gone onto a tremendous amount of hiking at the Rocky Mountains in the summer. And so, I’m very glad that I learned that there could be cause and effects and that a lot of health symptoms people have can be traced to exposures. So I got into it that way.
And then, all three of my daughters developed chemical sensitivity at widely-spaced intervals. It wasn’t any common exposure. But at any rate, because of that, I became very aware of what was going on in the field. That’s what led me to start writing books and doing documentaries. And then that led to organizing my foundation, which happened in 2001.
DEBRA: Well, I’m so glad that you do have a foundation and that you are doing the work that you’re doing and communicating about it. I love hearing your story because it really shows that people can have very specific symptoms and everybody’s chemical sensitivity is different. And I think that there’s a lot of people who may be listening who have symptoms and they think that it’s only just a headache or it’s only just arthritis or something like that and then they take a drug for those things – or just insomnia. In my case, well, I had a lot of different symptoms but then I used to be chemically sensitive.
And then I used to be reacting – as a chemically sensitive person, I should say, I think that if I went back to all that chemical exposure, I would probably be chemically sensitive again. But I don’t. So I’m not. But insomnia was one of my big symptoms. Just think about the people who are taking sleeping pills and all the people who are taking drugs for headaches.
They think that it’s one symptom and they don’t understand that it really can be our body’s response to a chemical exposure or multiple chemical exposures. It’s so important for people to know today about these chemical exposures. So tell us about fragrance because that’s the topic of the day. We just have a few minutes before we need to go to break. But let’s get started talking about this. Tell us a little bit about why fragrances are so toxic.
ALISON JOHNSON: Well, the best work really that’s being done in this field (as I’m sure you probably know) comes from Dr. Anne Steinemann. And she was on the board of the Chemical Sensitivity Foundation when I first founded it. She has now moved over to Australia and has a wonderful new position at the University of Melbourne in Australia that allows her to work specifically on all of these issues. Dr. Steinemann had an engineering Ph.D. from Stanford University. While she was in the States, she was a professor at Georgia Tech, at the University of Washington, guest professor at Stanford.
Anyway, she has all of the tools to study these things and she’s investigated the chemicals in fragrances using things like – I’m not sure of all the terms, gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to analyze the chemicals given off by these fragrance products.
She just published a new article in March, this month of 2015 in the journal, Air Quality, Atmosphere and Health. And in that article, she found, through her research, that 156 different VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) are emitted from the 37 products at this study. The 37 different products included the air fresheners, cleaning products, laundry supplies and personal care products.
So she’s just done so much to give the scientific underpinnings that we needed. It’s always been obvious for decades that certain people were reporting that they got very sick, various reactions to fragrance products. But it was easy for the fragrance industry just to say, “Oh, it’s just a psychological reaction,” et cetera. And Dr. Steinemann’s work puts it on a very firm scientific-based. So I think that as we move forward, we will see more and more fragrance-free workplaces. We’ve already seen fragrance-free medical facilities.
DEBRA: We need to go to break. I will say that I do know Dr. Steinemann and we’re working on a time for her to be on the show. It’s a little complicated because she’s in Australia and I have to record her. So we’re working out these details. But Dr. Steinemann will be on the show talking about her new study and her old studies, which are all very interesting. We’ll be right back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Alison Johnson, Chairperson of the Board of the Chemical Sensitivity Foundation. And when we come back, we’ll start talking about workplace issues.
DEBRA: This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Alison Johnson. She’s Chairperson of the Board of the Chemical Sensitivity Foundation and they are at ChemicalSensitivityFoundation.org.
There’s a specific page for the fragrance-free workplace references, which you can see in our menu or you can also get by direct link on my website at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com.
Okay, Alison, tell us about what the problems are with fragrances in the workplace, the troubles that people have with that.
ALISON JOHNSON: Well, people who are sensitive to chemicals who have a condition that a lot of us call multiple chemical sensitivity can react to chemicals in very strong ways.
For example, they may develop migraine headaches when they’re exposed to a co-worker’s perfume. For asthmatics, it is well-known that hypersensitive people with asthma react to fragrance products. In fact, in Anne Steinemann’s study that she did with Stanley Chris in 2009, they found that over 33% of asthmatics reported headaches, breathing difficulties and other problems from air fresheners and deodorizers.
And what I think employers need to realize is that the productivity of the employees is being reduced so greatly by exposure to fragrances because it not only causes breathing difficulty for many people and migraine headaches, it also just can produce what people sometimes call ‘brain fog’, loosely, but just people not feeling very sharp about what they’re thinking, slight memory problems, things like that. People are not as sufficient when they’re not feeling well. And I think too that this affects workers in general.
There are a lot of people that haven’t stopped to think of what might be causing their headache or something. And so if you reduce the number of products that cause these reactions, you’re definitely going to increase the productivity of your workforce. And also, it’s just essential for the people who are so reactive to those fragrances because a lot of them are just forced to drop out of the workplace.
This is really disastrous for the national economy because they have to eventually go on Social Security for supplemental income or Social Security Disability. And these people, the last thing they want is to be on a government handout, but they have no choice.
Otherwise, they’re just going to live under a bridge or something. And even the amount they get for those payments is ridiculously small. The most unusual case I ever heard of was a woman in New York City. And I met her and talked to her directly about this. She actually worked for the Public Health Department in New York City.
And she does fairly well within the accommodation for her sensitivity to fragrances because she would get very dizzy and could hardly walk when she was exposed to fragrances. And the one year, they put her on the floor of the building where she had access only to restrooms that had air fresheners in them.
And when she would go in to one of those restrooms with air fresheners, she would practically fall down when she tried to walk back to her desk. This woman actually had to go to the extreme measure of eating or drinking nothing that day that she went to work. So she would get up, not drink a drop, not eat anything, not eat or drink until she’s finished the workday just so she could avoid using the restroom.
Now, that was a really extreme case. And she actually got a certificate, a special award from the Mayor for the special service she had done as a computer expert. So we can lose some really good people in the workplace.
DEBRA: I agree. I think it’s important for employers to understand that. I remember, you and I have been dealing with chemical sensitivity for 30 years. I’ve been writing since 1982, but I was first diagnosed in 1978. So that was about 35 years ago too.
We both were beginning this at the same time period. And at that time, people weren’t talking as much as they are today about what’s toxic. And in fact, when I wrote my first book, nobody was talking about this at all. It was an unknown subject.
They didn’t know where to put my book on the bookshelves and I was the only person talking about it. But at that time, what we were talking about is we were saying, “These people are chemically sensitive.
Therefore, chemicals cause problems and health effects. People were asking for what seemed like special accommodations for people with MCS.” What I really, really want people to understand is (and I say this over and over, but I’m going to say it over and over, more and more and more) when I wrote my last book, Toxic Free a few years ago, I went through and I researched, researched, researched the health effects of toxic chemicals. And what I found was that every single illness can be associated to a toxic chemical exposure.
MCS is only one way that chemicals damage the body with chemicals damaging the immune system. Everybody’s system is affected by toxic chemical exposure. And so one person will get MCS, another person will get cancer, another person will be obese from endocrine disruptors.
It just depends on your own individuality. And I think that what I want to say to employers that it’s not about accommodating a few people who have visible symptoms, it’s about uplifting the whole, entire health of your entire workforce, which will, in turn, increase productivity and also reduce the amount you have to pay out on health care costs, less insurance, less health insurance, a healthier workforce. That’s really what we’re talking about here.
ALISON JOHNSON: Yes, absolutely. And speaking of reducing the cost for the business people, I’d like to recommend an article that someone pointed out to me last year. It’s called Fragrance in the Workplace.
DEBRA: Can you hold on just a second? We need to go to break and we’ll hear all about it when we come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Alison Johnson, Chairperson of the Board of the Chemical Sensitivity Foundation, and we’re talking about how to have a fragrance-free workplace. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Alison Johnson, Chairperson of the Board of the Chemical Sensitivity Foundation, and they are at ChemicalSensitivityFoundation.org We’re talking about Fragrance-Free Workplaces. So Alison, go on with what you were saying before the break.
ALISON JOHNSON: Yes. I just found a few months ago a very interesting article. It’s written by Christy Devader who is a professor at Loyola University of Maryland. It was published in the Journal of Management and Marketing Research and it’s titled Fragrance in the Workplace: What Managers Need to Know.
She starts off in the abstract by pointing out that this situation is very parallel to the campaign against second-hand smoke or the campaign for smoke-free workplaces. The article is quite a long article. It’s full of useful information for employers. It’s got one section called Cost to Employers. She says there the, “The adverse health effects to employees cost employers billions of dollars annually.”
For example, in 2007, the Center for Disease Control estimated that 22.9 million people are currently diagnosed with asthma and they quote an article saying that research by the Institute of Medicine equated fragrance to second-hand smoke in triggering asthma in adults and children.
And they quote other studies that showed 72% of asthmatics have a negative physical reaction to perfumes. Then they go on to say in 2004 that migraine headaches caused American employers $24 billion in direct and indirect healthcare cost. And in 2007, asthmatics lost an average of 30 workdays to absenteeism, et cetera. So they say in addition to absenteeism and lost productivity, there are also losses from increased cost for medical and health insurance, and costs associated with losses.
And her articles pools very useful information, suggestions to employers about the best way to implement fragrance-free workplaces. So basically, she is saying to them – and she finishes it up with a statement quoting from the Occupational Health and Safety Act, she actually says, “The general duty clause of the Occupational Health and Safety Act requires employers to ‘take every precaution reasonable in the circumstances for the protection of the workers.’” And she then finishes by saying, “Enough research demonstrates negative effects of synthetic fragrance that employers can no longer deny knowledge of what constitutes basic precaution.” First, she’s basically saying, “Watch out. You’re going to be liable to report to employers.”
DEBRA: Well, I think that’s an important point to make because I think that in different areas, when you are in a workplace, they’re supposed to provide a reasonably safe environment to work in. When you buy a house or rent a house, it’s supposed to be reasonably safe.
There are all these expectations of reasonable safety. It’s just common sense. And yet we have environment after environment. You can’t go grocery shopping without running into toxic chemicals. You can’t go to the mall without toxic chemicals.
You can’t go to school without toxic chemicals. And all of these environments need to be cleaned up.
ALISON JOHNSON: Yes. And speaking of schools, on our website for the Chemical Sensitivity Foundation, under the fragrance-free workplaces section, I list the American Lung Association.
They have a sample fragrance-free school policy. That shows how far we have come because I’ve been watching the American Lung Association for years wishing that they would get more involved in some of the chemical sensitivity issues. And all of a sudden, they have.
In fact, on this page, they say there are many people who experience unpleasant physical effects from scented products and a growing number of people who suffer more severe reactions to these types of products and chemicals.
This condition is known as ‘multiple chemical sensitivity’ and involves people who developed an acute sensitivity to various chemicals in the environment. That fact shows how things are moving because five years ago, you wouldn’t have even found the phrase ‘multiple chemical sensitivity’ in the American Lung Association’s website. DEBRA: No, you wouldn’t have. I know because I looked.
ALISON JOHNSON: So as I say, I’m delighted watching all of this. By the way, that professor that wrote the Journal for the Business School Magazine or the Workplace Magazine, she pointed out that it would take quite a while to get a smoke-free workplace movement really off the ground and really achieving anything.
And she says the Fragrance-Free Workplace Movement will move far faster because of the internet. And that’s absolutely true. We can all share information now like that fragrance-free, that whole list. When I went back to look at the webpage that I’d put up for the Fragrance-Free Workplaces, I was surprised. I’ve forgotten how many things I had discovered that are now available.
DEBRA: You wrote a great list.
ALISON JOHNSON: Yes, and it just gives some people a place to turn. And you’ll notice, I used just only reputable scientific statements. I avoid everything [inaudible 00:32:57].
DEBRA: Yes, I did notice that. We just have a couple of minutes to a break. When we come back after the break, I want us to talk about if somebody is in a heavily-fragranced workplace, to give us some ideas of what you can do to change that workplace and improve the workplace.
But I do want to say that as a possible alternative, many years ago, when I was faced with this situation, we didn’t have all these resources. And so I ended up choosing to just work at home and it was necessary for me to create my own business because I couldn’t go to work in the offices.
And I worked for a while in an office with an air filter. I had this big air filter and I sat it right on my desk. And I had to blow in my face in order for me to work in an office. And just because all the chemicals that were there anyway, plus it was in downtown San Francisco where everybody was wearing perfume.
But the funny thing was that at break time, people would come and congregate around my desk because the air was so nice.
ALISON JOHNSON: That’s amazing.
DEBRA: But I decided that I wanted to take control of my own work environment. And so for all these years, I’ve been working at home and I love it.
And so that’s always an option, is to just say you’re going to just take matters into your own hands and create your own home and your own business. But that’s really different from going and getting a job and to be an entrepreneur. But it is an option.
So we’re going to go break.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Alison Johnson, Chairperson of the Board of the Chemical Sensitivity Foundation at ChemicalSensitivityFoundation.org. And we’ll be right back to find out what you can do if you need to eliminate fragrance from your workplace.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Our guest today is Alison Johnson, Chairperson of the Board of the Chemical Sensitivity Foundation and they’re at ChemicalSensitivityFoundation.org.
ll these things we’re talking about are all on her website. So if you go to ChemicalSensitivityFoundation.org, you can see there’s a tab that says ‘fragrance-free’ and there are links to a very good resource list.
So Alison, if somebody is a worker and needs to keep their job, what can they do to reduce the fragrance in their workplace?
ALISON JOHNSON: Well, I think the best way to reduce it is to be able to convince our employees why it is that you’re asking for this accommodation. And one thing I would suggest to people is if they visit our Chemical Sensitivity Foundation website, they will see links that you can play films, the documentaries that I’ve made personally.
We’ve got an excellent one, the one titled Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Life-Altering Condition. It’s full of information on fragrances and how these have bothered gulf war veterans, 9/11 first responders, et cetera. Half the battle is convincing people that you’re not just an irritating, neurotic person trying to control people.
And so you need to gain their sympathy, so to speak. And it’s easier to do that by having them watch a film of other people. And some people like the Department of Labor in the State of Maine, they were going to institute a fragrance-free policy 10, 15 years ago.
They were using a short DVD I had. I’ve got 15-minute ones there that can be played online for free. They used that to educate employees because that’s the main exposure you’re going to get, from the people around you. Even if you have succeeded in getting your own office and could have an air filter or something’s there, you do have a certain risk of people coming in to your office to bring your reports or something. And sometimes you can ask for people to do that at a distance or something.
But still that becomes complicated. It’s really good if you can just get people on board doing it. But as I say, I’ve seen people be a little too confrontational about the way they approach it and they got their own employees mad, which meant that their employees wore extra perfumes, whatever their way to be mean. You can’t underestimate that. One of the cases in my book, Amputated Lives, I talked about a woman who was a nurse in the state nursing home for veterans in Vermont. It turned out she and several other employees became sick – the nurses became sick from cleaning products, fragrances. They became very sensitive to fragrances, period.
They actually found out through e-mails that some of their [inaudible 00:42:22] employees had tried to organize a special day when everyone would wear as much perfume as they could stand to try and make these people sick. They would just spray it in their bathroom these people used at the top of the stairway.
This woman had a terrible asthma attack that night and it happened to be the night her mother was dying in the nursing home. Her husband wanted this nurse to go the emergency room because her breathing was so awful and she went to the nursing home to be with her dying mother. So that’s an extreme case, but it is an example. Even though those people had not been confrontational, but [inaudible 00:43:00] employees got very angry about it. So you want to be a little careful. You don’t make enemies in the workplace.
Yes, you can try and control your own if you have a separate office and having an office with a window that can open, that can be useful. Air filters can be useful. And sometimes employers will actually pay for that. So it is a challenge. And as you say, occasionally, people can manage to work at home. With all of the change now toward teleworking, I think it’s a little easier for people.
DEBRA: I think so too.
ALISON JOHNSON: Especially in [inaudible 00:43:44] government, you can probably get permission to do that. I think as far as setting up your own businesses, you got the ground floor. I think I run into various MCS people that think, “I’ll set up a business doing non-toxic hand lotions and this and that.”
Part of the situation now too is now that the world is going mainstream with some of these ideas, there are excellent big companies making very good products. People are no longer are going to be looking for mom & pop operations manufacturing something in their kitchens. They’re going to go, “I can buy my hand soap from [inaudible 00:44:26] because I can trust them and I buy their toothpaste, et cetera.”
And I think in general, there are not a lot of possibilities for working out of your home. I did, I was lucky. I taught violin and piano in my home and did freelance editing for University presses. I was also raising my children and also, I could avoid exposure. But a lot of people will find it difficult I think to work out of their home, but it’s worth thinking about.
DEBRA: I think it’s worth thinking about. Another successful thing that I did, and this wasn’t in the workplace but just being a person out in the world. I spent seven years being really chemically sensitive. And I just couldn’t be around fragrances at all without having to worry about reactions.
Yet, I was young. This was when I was in my 20s, my mid-20s and single and dating. And so I would meet men who they’re wearing aftershave and they’d wash their clothes in scented detergent and all those stuff. And I had this thing where I would just say to them, “This is what’s going on. I’d love to go on a date with you but I can’t get within 20 feet of you if you’re scented.”
And I had this little write-up that I had one piece of paper that said, “Here are some unscented products that you can use and if you’d like to go out on a date with me, this is what I need.” And if somebody wasn’t willing to do that then I didn’t want to date them anyway.
But I had men do that because they would say, “Well, this makes sense to me.” And in fact, when I finally got married, my husband, he wasn’t chemically sensitive but he totally loved it that I wanted to live without chemicals.
That made so much sense for him and then he helped me do all those things. He helped me remodel my house in a non-toxic way and all those kinds of things. And so I think my philosophy in my work has always been not to ask people to do something, not to ask my readers or the world to do something, where I’m taking something away, but rather to say, here’s a toxic thing and here’s the non-toxic thing.
And I think that people are a lot more receptive when you’re needing to approach them one on one to not ask them to stop doing something they’re doing, but ask them to replace what they’re doing with something that’s healthier.
ALISON JOHNSON: Yes. I think absolutely. And sometimes you can even offer to pay for the new product. Tons of people do that. Now, I’m very healthy and I move out totally all around the real world. I travel and go to conferences.
DEBRA: I do too. You sound very healthy.
ALISON JOHNSON: Yes.
DEBRA: And I don’t want to interrupt you, but I just want to say to everybody who is chemically sensitive who’s listening, here are two people who recovered enough to be able to have normal lives. And I’m assuming that you lived in a pretty non-toxic home, but you go out in the world.
ALISON JOHNSON: Yes, absolutely. This last home I’m in, I built it without any particle board. There’s not a bed of particle board in my house and it’s all pre-finished hardwood floors or in rugs.
There’s nothing toxic in the house. I have a whole house water filter. But because of that my house is better than almost everybody around. People would say, “Aren’t you going to get a flu shot?” I say, “I never get the flu. Why would I need to get a flu shot?”
DEBRA: Me too! I don’t take those either.
ALISON JOHNSON: And I can walk more. I’m just way healthier than any of my friends. I can hardly remember a time when I said I couldn’t do something because I was sick.
DEBRA: Yes. Now see, I want everybody to hear her say this because I think a lot of times people with MCS think that it can’t be recovered from. And yet, here are two vibrant women who have come through to the other side of MCS by living without toxic chemicals, which is the way everybody should live.
Everybody would be healthier. It’s not limited to people with MCS.
ALISON JOHNSON: Yes. And just as a parenthesis, I have so much energy now that in the last five years, I’ve published biographies [inaudible 00:49:10], the writer, Henry James, and just this week, I’m finishing a documentary about Wallace Stevens that’s going to be very important.
It’s the first one in 26 years. I’ve been working eight hours a day, if not more, on this, for the last seven months. Even though I’m 75, I’m still working and at the top of my band despite that latent chemical sensitivity.
We have it very well under control now. I don’t go out and think, “Oh, this horrible fragrance here.” You don’t run into it as much anymore. I still would avoid being next to anyone with heavy fragrance.
DEBRA: I need to interrupt you because we only have 10 seconds left and I want to thank you so much for being on this show. This has been Alison Johnson.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com to find out more about the show and more about Alison. Be well.
