Some Reflections on Creating Fragrance-Free Space

In recent years, both the Friends General Conference summer gathering, and the FLGBTQC Midwinter Gathering have been working toward becoming fragrance-free spaces. This is a tricky process; creating fragrance- and chemical-free spaces depend on the individual daily decisions of hundreds or thousands of people. Every time someone washes their hands, gels their hair, applies deodorant, washes their clothes, cleans a mirror, shampoos the lobby rug, paints a wall, applies sunscreen, wears their favorite lipstick, lights a candle, launders the sheets in a conference center, pops the cap off a marker to make notes on newsprint or a white board, or does the lunch-time washing-up, they are faced with a choice about using a product that contains fragrance.

(In this post, I'm going to say "fragrance." But I hope we call all remember that this is a short-hand for actual fragrance and other problematic chemicals that can also trigger headaches, asthma, skin rashes and hives, neurological problems, and other symptoms in the approximately 20% of the population--according to one study I read whose citation I will try to find and insert later--who are sensitive to them. I'm also going to say "fragrance" because that is what these two Quaker conferences have been emphasizing in their ongoing work on these issues.)

This got really long, so I have included headings. It has four parts: The Challenges, which provides some background information; The Strategy, which talks about some of what these organizations have done to create fragrance-free gatherings; The Point: Some New Questions, which you may want to scroll down to if you are familiar with FGC and FLGBTQC conferences; and The Epilogue.

THE CHALLENGES

You can imagine the many challenges involved in trying to create what the FGC Gathering is trying to become: a traveling conference of 1500 or so people, all of whom will make the fragrance-free choice each time.

The first challenge is that many people don't know that they are making a choice about fragrance. It is so ubiquitous in the products we use that it comes to seem a natural part of our environment; the proverbial water the fish are swimming in. Why would people who don't have sensitivities think about this on their own? You'd be astonished if they did. So it's necessary to, first, let people know that there's a problem.

This leads directly to the second challenge: a lot of people--perhaps most people hearing about this for the first time, if my experience is any indication--don't believe there's a problem even once they're told about it. I don't, in general, blame people for this. If they've never known anyone who was affected, they probably have no idea how bad it can be. I have sometimes been tempted to tap someone on the shoulder and say, "Excuse me, I need to leave now, but I wanted to let you know before I go that your decision to wear perfume to this event not only excludes me from it but means that I will probably be sick until next Thursday." But hardly anyone has ever received that shoulder tap, from me or anyone else. So they've never enountered a sufferer in the wild.

Even if they believe there's a problem, and that for some people it can be quite bad, they're inclined to assume that these folks are very rare. The first time I brought up the issue of fragrance at the summer gathering, many years ago, the person I spoke to assumed that I was the only one affected, and that the problem of one person was not sufficient to merit asking 1500 people to change their behavior. In other words, the problem might be real, but it's the job of the sufferers to manage it.

One friend told me that she met a woman at the gathering two years ago who was ranting about the FF policy. She thought it was just another pointless PC thing. My friend told her about me, about how hard gatherings had always been for me, and how much my experience had improved since the FF policy had started to get some traction. The woman was surprised and moved. She'd had no idea this actually mattered to anybody.

I also suspect that many of us progressive types suffer from issue fatigue. We've gotten on board with "Column A: The Essential Social Issues." However imperfectly, we've embraced racial justice; gender equality; the gay and lesbian rights movement; physical accessibility for people who use wheelchairs, scooters, canes, and walkers. In addition, each of us has probably also chosen to prioritize some or all of the "optional" social issues in Column B as well: factory farming, a struggling educational system, the dismantling of voter rights, conditions for workers in overseas factories, animal rights, over-reliance on petroleum fuels, global warming, the environment, the existence of bisexuals, the bottled water industry, invasive species, and whatever else I can't think of off the top of my head.

It can be very frustrating when you try to introduce the fragrance issue to the very people you think will be most open to it, and instead they resist. But I do think that resistance often comes from folks feeling like they have enough on their plate and they don't have the energy to take on one more thing.

I also wonder if some of the resistance might come from a desire not to seem even more like whacked-out troublemakers than we already do. I can imagine--and this is entirely my imagination, not anything I have any knowledge of--but I can imagine the person whose job it is to talk to universities or retreat centers about our needs ranting, "I already have to tell their cafeteria staff that they have to learn to cook vegan food, turn off the ice cream machines at Wednesday's lunch, and get us re-usable cups instead of the paper ones they usually have at the beverage station. And I need to tell the facilities people that we need some of the bathrooms re-designated from Male and Female to Gender-Neutral. Now I'm supposed to tell them, what? That we want them to switch out all the bathroom soap for fragrance-free, and that they can't use their usual cleaning products in the bedrooms? Well, I sure look forward to that conversation!"

Even once people decide they'd like to make some personal changes to help with this problem, there are challenges. They might not know where to find FF products for instance--though this has gotten much easier in recent years. I used to be able to use only Clinique makeup, for instance--$15 for a lipstick!--but a few years ago, when I needed to buy makeup for the first time in years for a choir concert, I was able to get cheap FF lipstick, blush, foundation, eyeshadow, and mascara at my corner Rite Aid.

But people who haven't looked before may not know that somewhere in that wall of shaving cream is one brand whose "extra sensitive" product is fragrance-free, or that Common Brand Of Lotion makes a FF moisturizer you just have to read the fine print to find. It can be disorienting and overwhelming.

People might also be concerned that FF products won't work as well as what they're used to. And that might indeed happen. Sometimes that's a trade-off people should just resign themselves to making (are your perfect hair and blinding-white gym socks really that important?), and sometimes it's a trade-off they can't make. I had some things to say about this previously in a post called The Hierarchy of Harm.

THE STRATEGY

The approach that the FGC Gathering took, beginning a few years ago, and which FLGBTQC has also adopted, is to make the transition easier for people. As well as providing information and a list of fragrance-free products on their website, the FGC Gathering has provided bars of FF soap participants can pick up at registration, and a table of product samples. Somebody on the staff walks around campus, goes into the public bathrooms in every building we're going to use, puts a "please don't use this" sign on the soap dispenser, and leaves a supply of FF liquid soap on the counter.

At the most recent FLGBQTC Midwinter, we arrived to find that the Gathering Committee had not only provided FF products in the public bathrooms, but had stocked each private bathroom with a dispenser of FF soap.

I don't know the rationale that was used when the decision to do this things was made. I've always assumed it was to provide education and support. Perhaps also to make switching to fragrance-free easy enough that people would have no excuse not to do it.

So, that's where we're at. The fragrance-free policies have been, in my experience, very successful at both these conferences. It took a few years, especially at FGC Gathering, for the reality to catch up with our intentions, but the last couple of years have been a transformed experience for me. I think it was only four years ago that I sprinted out of the shower half-rinsed, and down the hall to my room half-naked, because, even though I was on a "fragrance free" floor in the dorm, someone had come in and cracked open the World's Most Toxic Body Wash in the stall next to me. But year before last, I only had a single exposure all week, and that one in a public place where I was able to move away. And last year, much the same. Instead of resigning myself to partial participation, to enjoying myself despite the headache and dizziness, to several days of recovery once I get home, I've simply enjoyed myself.

For this, I thank everyone who worked on this policy, who put out the new soap in the public bathrooms, who was willing to try a new deodorant, who bought FF dryer sheets, who was willing to be educated to be compassionate, to be moved instead of entrenched in their ideas, to put themselves to some small trouble and inconvenience for me and my ilk.

THE POINT: SOME NEW QUESTIONS

Which brings us to the point of this blog post: For how long is it productive to provide this level of support to attenders? When, and how, can responsibility be shifted from the organizers to the community--to the individuals who make up the community?

This came up during a conversation I had with some friends at the FLGBTQC Midwinter Gathering in February. Apparently the organizing committee had discussed this, with regard to providing every attender FF soap in their bathrooms.

It was clear to everyone that providing FF soap in the public bathrooms was the responsibllity of the organizing committee. But it wasn't so clear that providing soap for the private bathrooms was. And it's not clear to me that it is either, or that FGC should continue providing bars of soap at check-in.

Providing toiletries for people's personal use strikes me as problematic for several reasons.

First, it is an extra expense, and extra work, for organizers who have a very long to-do list and a very limited budget. Maybe this is a relatively small concern; after all, these committees take on all kinds of additional tasks when the community decides it matteres enough. If being fragrance-free is important to the community, perhaps the organizers are simply acting to reflect that value.

But--second--I think this extra work reflects the organizers' commitment, but may paper over a lack of clarity in the community. We might end up with a majority of attenders using FF soap in the shower, while only a minority are actually committed to creating a FF conference. Is this a problem, if the goal is, by and large, met? I think it is, for a few reasons.

One is that it can create a false sense that a problem has been solved, and close down conversation and educationi prematurely. Maybe. This is me being hypothetical. Do Quakers ever stop talking about anything? OK, this argument strikes me as a bit weak.

But what message does it send on an individual level? For some people, the FF soap at registration may serve as a reminder that their other products should be FF as well. For others, it may suggest that there's nothing more they need to do. If soap is important enough that the conference provides it for everyone, then is shampoo less important? Deodorant? Lotion? Hair gel?

Is providing soap an effective way to reduce environmenal fragrance at conferences? Honestly, I doubt it. If you asked me, I'd say that soap, which people use in the shower and which doesn't necessarily have a strong residual odor once they're dried and dressed, wouldn't be my first priority. Lotion, which is often strongly perfumed and which people feel comfortable putting on in public, repeatedly, throughout the day, is a much bigger problem for me. Likewise sunscreen and lip balm. If I were asked "What grooming products would make the most difference to you if everyone were to switch to the fragrance-free version?" I'm not sure the soap people use in the shower, or to wash their hands in their own bathroom, would make the top 10.

At the Conference Run By Me In The World Which I Am Also Completely In Charge Of, I probably wouldn't provide folks with soap. But I would search their belongings--especially purses and day packs--for little bottles of stinky lotion, and do a tube-for-tube swap. People whose lotion was already fragrance-free would be eligible for door prizes.

(Public restroom liquid handsoap is also a major offender. Once Raider forgot and washed his hands with the soap in a rest area bathroom when we were on a trip, and I almost left him by the road somewhere in Iowa. When I talk about "soap," I'm not talking about the public restroom soap, which I hope and expect organizers will continue to provide an alternative for. This is a big deal.)

Finally, by providing soap for a number of years in a row, we create an expectation in people that soap will be provided. They start to feel entitled to their free soap. This is a problem, in my view, because it means they aren't pushed to take responsibilty for their own choices. They aren't being asked to actively commit to the fragrance-free policy. They aren't being expected to remember from year to year not only that they'll want to bring a fan for their dorm room, but that they'll need to come ready to bathe and groom themselves with products that aren't harmful to their beloved Friends.

By "they" I mean "we"--in a Quaker context, there is such a fine line between organizer and attender that they are often the same person in different years, or even the same person in the same year. There's no great divide, and I don't mean to imply or create an us-vs-them dichotomy here. I can attest to this sense of entitlement because even I, a person who uses only fragrance-free products for personal grooming and has for years, feel entitled to my bar of FGC soap. I use liquid soap at home, and some years I forget to buy bar soap for the trip. That's OK, I think; I'll take Raider's bar soap. But his bar soap is round and doesn't fit in the rectangular travel soap box. Faced with the impossibility of fitting a round soap into a square box, I shrug and say, "Oh, well. I'll just pick up a bar of soap at registration."

At what point do we expect people to have internalized this community expectation around accessibility, to take full responsibility for doing their part? I want each person to understand that this is their job. And they may not understand that as long as someone else keeps doing it.

THE EPILOGUE

I wrote this for my friend Racy (not her real name. Part of an anagram of her real name. A good part). When we had a short conversation about this issue and she asked if I would write about it, I wasn't sure I had strong feelings either way. Yet I seem to have written myself into some strong feelings. I'm not entirely sure I agree with myself. It's possible that if someone else had promised to wear a black t-shirt if I would write a piece about how important it is for FGC and FLGBTQC to keep providing soap to people, I'd be working myself into a froth about that.

(Ha! Soap...froth. I didn't even do that on purpose. But it makes me sad I never worked "soapbox" in somewhere.)

I don't have time to proof. The children are hungry, I have no idea what I'm going to feed them, the kitchen is a mess, and the laundry needs folding so that we can pack for a short trip we're leaving on in the morning. Very early in the morning. You do me a kindness if you drop me a note about any typos you spot.

The ranty part of the Hierarchy of Harm post

That last post was two-faced: loving and gentle in the top half, angry in the bottom half. I decided to split it into two; I really want people to hear the angry part, but I don't want it to overwhelm the loving part.

A few things I wish everybody would get:

1. Just because it's "natural" doesn't mean it's not a trigger.

Let me repeat that: JUST BECAUSE IT'S "NATURAL" DOESN'T MEAN IT'S NOT A TRIGGER.

To emphasize this, I will tell you that I have been made ill by herbal teas ordered by people sitting at my table. Also, if you think for a minute you will be able to come up with a list of a hundred natural things that can be harmful to some people, from pollen to snake venom. So please, please, please, stop telling us folks when we ask you not to use something that's making us ill that it is impossible because it's "natural." When you say, "It's really the chemicals that people react to, not the scent," you may be right about some people, but you are wrong about a whole bunch of other people including me. It's possible I'm going to stab the next person who says this to me, so you'll want to be very careful about it from now on.

2. This goes for essential oils, too.

3. I am not the only person who is sensitive to scents and chemicals.

I really appreciate it when you "try to remember" not to put perfume on when we're meeting for lunch. But all those days when we are not meeting for lunch, and you wear perfume, you may be making other people ill, giving them headaches, or triggering their asthma. When people treat this as an issue that they only need to think about because of that one friend of theirs, it puts every sensitive person in the position of having to advocate for herself all the time, and this is stressful and exhausting. I get tired of having to ask, everywhere I go, for people to make "special" accommodations for me, or of telling someone they've made me ill after I'm already ill, which feels really crappy to both of us. [And those times you forget to try to remember, and wear the perfume? They break my heart.]

If you stop thinking of this as an issue of mine, as something that you only need to think about when you know you're going to see me, but instead as something that you do for the well-being of all kinds of people you don't know who might be in that stuffy conference room with you, or in line behind you at the grocery store, or on the bus, if you start to think of it as something you do for the sake of accessibility, you won't have to "try to remember" not to put perfume on to have lunch with me, because you won't be wearing it anyway.

I'm not special. I'm unlucky in this way, but I'm so far from being the only one that it's not funny. This is not an issue about me. It's an issue about accessibility and harm reduction. Please consider taking a step down the Hierarchy of Harm. I will thank you, and the unknown person who does not have to go to bed for two days after you get in the elevator with him thanks you, too.

[Also, I say this with all love: if you find yourself wanting to post a comment that is a defense of your choice to use perfume or other scented products, please squash that impulse. I don't need to hear it again. That's your choice, you don't need to justify it to me, and I'm not going to give you my blessing. "But I just don't feel dressed until I've put on my perfume," is another thing that's getting awfully close to a justifiable stabbing offense, so tread lightly. I know this is hard; I've lived with it a long time. You have my sympathy if you just don't get it, or don't want to be told you have to change one more behavior, or think me and people like me are just entitled whiners, or want me to forgive you for refilling the fragrance-free soap bottle in your bathroom with Dial, as one of my best friends recently did. Lots of very good people have been, or are, in that same spot. But right now in my life, beyond writing this and other things about the issue, I can't be the one to help you with that. Because I realized as I was writing this that I'm carrying a lot of anger and pain about this right now.]

For People Who Want to Be Scent-Sensitive: Su's Hierarchy of Harm

People are becoming more aware of how scented products and chemicals can impact accessibility, for people with asthma, those who get migraines, and folks like me who react to the scents themselves. But it can be hard to know what's hurtful and what's not, and some well-intentioned people trying really hard bump up against the problem that the limited array of fragrance-free products may not meet their needs, so that it is a gleeful discovery to find a FF hair gel that doesn't make your hair look and feel like you styled it with Elmer's Glue. As a scent-sensitive person, I appreciate people's efforts and don't want them to give up because they can't be perfect, so today in the shower I came up with Su's Hierarchy of Harm: a list of scented things from worst to best, which I offer with the idea that the farther you can move down this list, the more helpful you will be to folks like me.

Caveat: this is my list. Some people are more or less sensitive than I am, or sensitive to different things. But I think the stuff at the top of my list does most harm to most people who have sensitivities or for whom scents are triggers, so this should be more broadly helpful, I hope.

So, from worst to best:

1. Anything whose only purpose is to add fragrance to a person or environment.

Perfume, essential oils, scented candles, incense, plug-in air fresheners, hanging air fresheners in cars, and oh god patchouli. Patchouli is far and away the worst for me, with incense a close second. Patchouli is about the only thing that can require me to leave an open-air event (homeschool park day, for instance) if someone shows up wearing it. If people would stop adding fragrance to the environment just to add fragrance to the environment, about 80% of the exposures that make me ill or exclude me from events would disappear.

2 (tie). Scented grooming products used in communal spaces or in my presence.

Most scented grooming products, like shampoo, conditioner, soap, and deodorant, don't trigger me unless they're freshly applied, I'm in the bathroom where they are or have recently been applied, or we're sleeping together. (Reminder: this is me. I am not everybody.) Usually I am not bothered by anyone's shampoo if their hair is dry. These scents linger in poorly-vented bathrooms, so if we're sharing a communal bathroom at the Gathering, say, I need you to not use this stuff in the shower even if I'm not in there right now (so please don't call out, "Is anybody in here sensitive to scents? No? Then I'm going to go ahead and use this body wash.").

2 (tie). Scented hand lotion.

I don't know if scented hand lotion is really stinkier than all the other stuff people use, or if it's just that this is the product women are likely to whip out of their purse and apply any old time--at the table in a restaurant, in a meeting, in the car--but scented hand lotion accounts for a lot of my worst exposures. If you could swap out a nice little tube of Aveeno or Eucerin FF lotion for whatever's in your bag right now, it would make a big difference in my life.

4. Fabric softener, especially the long-lasting sheets.

Even if you use scented detergent, that probably won't cause me any problems unless we're snuggling or I'm trying to sleep in a bed at your house. But some of the strongly-scented, long-lasting dryer sheets (at least, that's what I think is causing this) are so toxic I can't have you in my house, and may have to leave a public event, if you're using them.

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What's above this line are the things that, if people would just stop using added scents, switch to unscented hand lotion and unscented fabric softener, my world would be a lot friendlier. If you want to work on this issue, making those changes would get you much of the way without, I think, being too onerous.

You can go farther than this if you like, of course. There are a lot of unscented products (but you should know that "unscented" products sometimes have "masking" scents added, so they are not fragrance-free and can be triggers) and more and more FF products all the time. You might consider at least trying laundry soap, shampoo, soap, lotion, and cleaning products (edited to add: and cat litter!); they may not work as well as their smelly brethren, but they might work well enough for you. And if they don't, at least you're making an informed decision to keep using that hair goop that is the only thing that tames your frizz. And maybe that hair goop ends up being the only scented product you still use. This is a harm-reduction model, so any fragrance you can cut out adds to the communal good.

(Note: there was a ranty lower half of this post. I moved it to its own post here so it wouldn't drown out the more loving voice I want people to be able to hear in this part.)