I’m sure in my case it’s some kind of weird reaction, because people are always asking my co-worker what she’s wearing and telling her how lovely it is.
I really wasn’t trying to dismiss your allergy. I was just trying to present myself as a perfume wearer. I was trying to point out that the world is FULL of smells. If I can’t wear perfume, can I clean my loo with scented cleaner? Can I drive my car past you? Can I spray the room with air freshner because you are popping in and the smell of my smoking may hurt you? Can I cook with aromatic herbs if you come for dinner?
I truly am sorry that you have such a severe reaction to perfume. Honestly it sounds like normal life would be hellish when you are that allergic. I get hayfever, so I can relate! This time of year I’m sneezing constantly (who said Hayfever just happened in spring…Summer sucks).
Yes I have heard of people dying from asthma attacks, my Uncle was one of them and I truly do sympathise. I just think that because some people are allergic to perfume we can’t ban it from society. I don’t generally wear make up, I never have, perfume is my one “girly” thing. I like smelling nice (yes I negate it with that whole smoking thing and I now know some people think it stinks!).
I’m not trying to negate your allergy, I’m just saying that perfume is an industry worth billions and enjoyed by many, realisticaly it isn’t going away and I would feel pissed off if a co worker tried to take my one-wrist-squirt away. Of course if I worked with someone with your condition I would. I have no interest in causing anyones death but my own (that whole smoking thing 
) but I won’t stop my daily Issy Miyake squirt until someone tells me it is harming them directly.
I really do feel sorry for your condition but when I get ready to leave the house each day I am not adding that one squirt in order to kill you. I add it because I like it. I do not add it knowing my presence in a room could kill you.
Being a smoker I have become very aware of the scents that enter other peoples nostrils…perfume isn’t something I had considered before but I am not promising to go to less then half a squirt.
I don’t marinade! I’m more your “mere whiff” type. Jeez, I get a teeny bottle each Xmas, marinading in it would mean in was gone by February. I have lots left! I promise not to poison anyone with it intentionaly.
Sounds like we’ve reached common ground here. As others have pointed out, co-workers can be much more of a problem, irritating-aroma-wise, than other people, because you have to spend your whole day with co-workers and manage to get some work done. I think you’re doing the right thing by being willing to give up even your minimal use of scent if a co-worker really had a serious reaction to it.
And as far as the rest of the world goes, it sounds as though you aren’t wearing enough of the stuff to be seriously offensive to anybody, so you’re golden. (I would be curious to know what happens as a result of switching to half-a-squirt for your daily dose, though. My guess would be that you would actually find the smaller amount still quite detectable enough for you to enjoy, and it would make your perfume last twice as long! :))
Good to know. I honestly do find it hard to believe that my squirt a day could ruin a coworkers day let alone kill them, I work in a kindy…I have to occasionaly change pee-y or even pooey undies and I have a -ahem- a delicate gag reflecive. BUT should a co worker tell me that my perfume is doing them damage then I would ditch Issey.
I would be curious to know how I could do a half squirt! As to the half squirt being enjoyable, I’m a smoker I probably wouldn’t notice :D.
The bottom line is I enjoy my perfume and I don’t want to kill anyone BUT surely their are many more offensive smells then perfume.
I only mentioned you because you said you couldn’t see how wearing perfume could make someone sick - if you’re just wearing a tiny bit, then there’s no problem. I’ve worked with people who “squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt” it on in the morning and then continue to reapply it during the day. They just can’t smell it on themselves and need to keep putting more and more on.
And it depends on the scent. Some are light, but there are some out the that are reallt strong and heavy - I know Opium is one, and Giorgio is another - that can trigger a migraine for me. There’s something about them that is just too heavy.
Oh my! That one does me in as well. It was very popular about a decade ago, along with a perfume called Poison. Those were the 2 worst for me.
The problem is not with how much you wear but whether the perfume has ingredients that perfumes are allergic to. Apparently what triggers my perfume-related asthma attacks is an ingredient found only in perfume, and only in a very small minority of perfumes – I doubt I’ve run across more than ten fragrances that contain whatever ingredient it is. So other scented products don’t irritate me the way the perfume does – although some do make my eyes itch and water, and I find some nauseating if they’re too heavy, none cause me to not be able to breathe, thank heaven. Fortunately for me, most places where I run across a perfume that bothers me, I’m able to get away quickly. It’s usually as easy as moving my seat on an airplane back a few rows or going to the other end of the subway car.
The problem lies, of course, when you have a bad reaction to someone’s fragrance and you’re trapped somewhere you can’t just get up and leave, such as work. I’ve worked a lot of different places, and I’ve only had problems those two times with bitchy, nasty coworkers who refused to stop wearing their fragrance even though they knew it gave me such severe asthma – and without management being willing to step up and protect my health (the first office, they told me it was a “hygiene issue, not a health issue,” to which I replied, naturally enough, “How is asthma a hygiene issue?”), I was stuck. To this day I still marvel that management would see me have to go to the emergency room for treatment for an asthma attack the very first day the coworker started wearing that fragrance and not want to mitigate the problem.
But courtesy for others apparently is a dying art in the workplace. I’m glad you would stop wearing your fragrance if it bothered someone, calm kiwi. I’ve had considerate coworkers who, on discovering that some scents caused me problems, voluntarily stopped wearing any fragrance to work. The problem is, of course, when the coworker refuses to stop wearing the fragrance, and in that case, if management won’t help the situation, you’re screwed. I really feel for the OP because it’s no fun being labeled as a troublemaker simply because you can’t breathe. That happened to me, too. Ask any allergist, however: Perfumes are one of the largest sources of allergy and asthma issues going, and a surprisingly common trigger for asthma attacks.
I hope the OP finds a way to get the coworker to stop bathing in that godawful scent. I have seriously contemplated calling OSHA on the workplace hazard element of it; that’s something the OP may want to consider doing (if they’re in the US, obviously). Or file a grievance/complaint against management, if your workplace provides such an opportunity. Because it can cross the line from being an annoyance to being a genuine health hazard, as many in this thread have pointed out.
Jezz, Calm Kiwi, don’t make a stink 
I’m not trying to close down the perfume industry, and I’m not aware of cancer in my nose as yet. I was just venting (another one, pow! ) my frustration at a new experience for me and how my manager did not back me up. End of story.
Thanks Waverly, for the shaving cream idea, I won’t do this at the office but I have a buddy who needs this in his tent the next time we go camping.
I’m just a stinky individual. I’m trying!
I just like my Eau de Stink.
You can prise my Eau de Stink from my cold, dead, stinky hands UNLESS I know it will kill you.
Pretty, smelly, perfumey, stuff =good. Stinky, dead coworker=not so good!
Try it and find out. Report back to us, m’kay?
{Bolding mine}
See, this is part of the issue right there. You are assuming that your perfume smells good, because it smells good to you. The point I was trying to make is that there will always be someone who finds your perfume awful, either from the smell of it or from actually being allergic to it or triggering asthma. Wearing perfume could be analogous to smoking; if you were the only one who could smell it, and it didn’t affect anyone else around you*, I would say bathe in it if you wanted. Perfume does affect everyone around you, and it is not ethically responsible if you live in a society with many other people to not consider the effect you are having on them.
In other words, your right to stink ends at my nose.
*If you spray your perfume on a cotton ball and put it in your bra, you will be able to smell it without offending everyone around you.
This is how I do it now, and why I’m pretty sure I’m no longer a Perfume Offender.
I can understand not wanting to offend with BO, but what’s with the “I want to smell something pretty all day” routine? Why not just sniff the bottle in your purse throughout the day? And it’s not like we need to be all pretty and alluring, we’re working dagnabbit! (unless we’re on the Dope).
You know, calm kiwi, I was thinking about this, and it occurs to me that this might be a cultural thing. Canadians are cooped up in our houses and offices for six or seven months a year, breathing stale air and not able to open windows. I think it is possible that we are more sensitive about people smelling up our stale air than other, less restricted cultures might be.
To be fair BMalion, taking the bottle to work with you might prove disastrous in that it could shatter, making a much worse stink (that would be harder to get rid of if it got into the carpet or furniture) than wearing too much. So, putting the scent on a cotton ball and wearing that in your bra is less offensive than a dab on the wrist? (Which is then blotted after being rubbed into the nape of my neck and on the other wrist, and my hands washed.) Hmm, I’ll remember that. I hardly wear scent, anymore. I use Aussie Hair Insurance and I figure it’s pretty stinky as is.
Question from a non scent sensitive:
Perfume is virtually a part of every beauty product, unless you specifically purchase an unscented variety. Do these other scents intrude? I rarely wear perfume. I have my one bottle of Yves Saint Laurent’s Paris, but that bottle will last me three years because I wear it so little. I do, however, use various body washes, shampoos, lotions, and such that do have scents.
Example: I am currently using Bath & Body Works’ line of aromatherapy body washes and shampoo -Jasmine Vanilla shampoo and the Orange Ginger body wash from that same line. Do scents like that affect you as standard spray-on perfume does?
I know my leave in conditioner is stinky. I spray it on my boar’s hair brush and brush it through my hair it help tame it, and sometimes spray it right on my hair as it is drying to help keep it from tangling. I’m not sure about body washes etc. unless you layer that with powder, lotion, deoderant, and cologne all the same scent?
The scents of body washes and conditioners and stuff don’t seem to have the legs that actual perfumes have - it’s rare that these type of products leave the con-trails that perfumes leave. I can pretty much track someone’s progress around a building by their perfume trails, but I have to be standing fairly close to someone to smell their conditioner.
I don’t know how these scents affect people who aren’t just smelling the perfume but being chemically affected by it, though.
What an excellent thought!
Most inner-city offices do not have windows that you can open at all, which I always hated.
Where I work at the moment, all the windows are openable and in Summer you actually have to open them, because the air conditioning is ducted evaporative. I’d say we have windows open, or at the very least ajar, for a good 10 months of the year.
No wonder I like that place! (Of course, it plays hell with my hayfever, but I can get antihistamines for the couple of months that’s a problem.)