Thursday, March 20, 2008

Why Air "Freshener" Stinks

I nearly freaked when my boyfriend happen to read off the warnings and ingredients on a random air freshener bottle in a work van he was driving. After complaining about the smell, he finally picked up the bottle and examined, only to find nearly comical (in the B horror movie type way) sentences like "wear a mask when spraying, avoid contact with eyes, skin...call paramedics if one stops breathing" and then directly after saying "use when you would like fresh clean air". The reason you might want to avoid breathing, touching, or using air freshener is because it actually releases a nerve deadening agent & poisons the air, with a toxic recipe including not so fresh ethanol and propane. It also makes air flammable which Sarah Cooper from Great Britain (pictured here) discovered when part of her kitchen had a plug-in freshener induced fire.
I never use any type of fresheners or perfumes not only because they are unregulated chemical cocktails, but also...well... they f-ing stink. And now I know they can also burn my house down.
So here's a typical ingredient list for a spray bottle freshener :

ethyl or isopropyl alcohol
glycol ethers
surfactant (quaternary ammonium salts)
perfume
water
propellants
metazene (4.0%)
petroleum distillates (6.0%)
aluminum chlorhydrol
bromsalicylanilide 2,3,4,5-BIS(2-butylene) tetrahydrofural
cellosolve acetate
dichlorodifluoromethanol
ethanol
fatty esters
lauryl methacrylate
methoxychlor
methylene chloride
o-phenylphenol
p-dichlorobenzene
pine oil (toxicity like turpentine)
piperonyl butoxide
pyrethrin
synthetic surfactants
trichloromonofluoromethane
wax
zinc phenolsulfonate

Pretty Fresh huh ? Try opening some windows instead, and let real fresh air take care of the problem. :)


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