As winter starts to come on here in Ontario there is less opportunity to air out your home by opening the window. In a month or so it will be off limits until sometime in April, most likely. Indoor air can get pretty stale in the meantime. Many people will choose one of the two cheaper alternatives to “freshen” their indoor air – air fresheners, or Febreeze.
But are these really good alternatives to get better air?
Let’s look at air fresheners first. Almost all are made up of varying concentrations of four basic ingredients: formaldehyde, petroleum distillates, p- dichlorobenzene, and aerosol propellants.  Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen and is used as a preservative, in fact, it is embalming fluid. It is in most manufactured goods these days and is one of the bigger threats to your health, as it can reach significant concentrations in the home from the off-gassing of consumer products.  And that begs the questions: why would anyone knowingly add more?
Next come petroleum distillates. There are a variety of these found in most air fresheners and are used for a variety of reasons. Some are used for fragrance, others to destroy odours. But the fact of the matter is that if you wouldn’t recommend people go around sniffing gas (which is a petroleum distillate) you probably shouldn’t use air freshener. Now, the degree of toxicity will vary per compound, but I think it’s say to say you should avoid breathing volatile organic compounds (VOCs), no matter what they are.
P-dichlorobenzene gets special mention due to its’ ubiquitous use. It is used to control odour, and while it officially hasn’t been classed as a known carcinogen…it is. It has been banned in many public workplaces in the states, as it should be, being the bastard offspring off mustard gas and benzene (that’s not how you make it, but if you added those two together, theoretically, you’d get dichlorobenzene). But hey, it controls mold and mildew…not by being extremely toxic though, by talking gently to them and making them see the error of their ways. Seriously though, if it kills those things, what do you think it does to you?
Propellants are basically pressurized gases that force the fragrances out once you release them. This seems innocuous enough, except that they are usually things like propane, butane, dimethyl ether, and other organic compounds that are carcinogens. Though they may not be officially recognized as such just yet.
If you know a bit about chemistry you may have noticed some common traits among the chemicals listed. If not, I’ll point them out here:
- They are all organic compounds (meaning carbon based)
- They are all fairly volatile (they vapourize easily)
- They are all carcinogenic (they all cause cancer)
- They are lipophilic (they are soluble in fat, not water, and hence are very difficult to excrete)
The last point needs a bit more explanation. Many people are familiar with the term “bio-accumulation,” which means that certain chemicals, once trapped in a living body, simply move up the food chain as one organism eats the one below it. This is because any particular animal in the chain can’t get rid of it, and hence just stores it in its’ fat. That means these chemicals are lipophilic. Continuing on, all that air freshener you’ve smelled over the years is stored somewhere in you.
Now that we’ve gone over this, would you use one in your home?
If your home has odour problems, you have to find out the root cause and address it. While this may be considerably more expensive upfront, it will be dwarfed by medical costs and decreased quality of life later on. There truly are no quick fix magic bullets.
