ISLAMABAD: People with asthma or allergies may want to avoid air fresheners and other chemicals used to spread fragrant scents through their homes, and their doctors should be aware of the hazards.
"The chemicals in some of these products can trigger the nasal congestion, sneezing and the runny nose," Dr. Stanley Fineman, an allergist with Emory University and the Atlanta Allergy & Asthma Clinic. "With the asthmatics, there's really good data showing their lung function changes when they're exposed to these compounds", Science Daily reported.
Fineman said that he was hoping to raise awareness of the issue, so that doctors and allergy and asthma patients would be more aware of a potential cause of irritation.
"A lot of patients say that they don't correlate an increase of their symptoms with exposure," Fineman told MyHealthNewsDaily. "One of the things that I'm trying to do in my talk is make our members, the allergists that are in practice, more aware of this problem."
Fineman said there is not necessarily an increase in allergies to any of the compounds in fragrance products, but that products such as air fresheners, scented candles, plug-in deodorizers and wick diffusers seem to be used much more often"People who have asthma, a large number of them are chemically sensitive, and therefore find fragrant products irritating," said Stanley Caress, a professor in the department of environmental studies at the University of West Georgia.
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