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by jsocuwl 1015 days ago
Isn't that study financed by P&G aka maker of Febreeze?
2 comments

Yes, Procter & Gamble funded it. That seems to like something they might and should be interested in.

Personally, I realized at a young age I was very affected by some fragrances and perfumes. I got vicious headaches and felt sickened when exposed to some of those. It was especially bad at some stores that doused their store with fragrances, and in Churches where both men and women would slather fragrances on themselves before going there.

They didn't bother my wife and daughters at all though and I finally had to demand they stop using them in our house.

Because of that I learned to gtfo of places as soon as I walked in and smelled it. And I started buying my wife and daughters pure Rose Oil because that actually made me feel pretty good when I got a few whiffs of it, and they all loved that.

Apparently I was not even close to alone with those adverse reactions because around mid 2000s stores began to quit doing that and I very seldom detect those toxins when I go in stores now.

I never found out exactly what was that affected me, but it was sure vicious. I think it may have been some sort of "bonding agent" that made fragrances "stick" better and last longer.

Procter & Gamble sells a lot of stuff with fragrances in them. It behooves them to make sure their products are not sickening folks and, if they can, provide some real benefit.

I'm absolutely with you. Perfumes, new cars, things with artificial smells can really get me.
New car smell is actually all harmful outgassing from plastic so not without reason.
This is a frequent midbrow complaint, but it doesn't matter who funds studies as long as they're correctly constructed.

Especially because otherwise you won't get the studies because nobody else cares.

> This is a frequent midbrow complaint…

I’ve never really thought of attention to conflict of interest in terms of high, low and midbrow culture. Whether the study is well-executed or not, I want to know what the funding mechanisms are because there is a history of commercial funders inserting themselves in various aspects of study design and reporting. I won’t discount a study solely on the basis of the outcomes’ favourability to the funder, but it’s an evaluative data point.