Chemical sensitivity or chemical entitlement?
But while scent-sensitive souls point to wheezing lungs, watery eyes, throbbing temples and even perfume-induced ambulance rides, others wonder if something else is behind the big ado about odor.

“I understand that there are people who’ve been exposed to hard core chemicals and have legitimate issues,” says Carly Sommerstein, a 42-year-old production editor in New York who became extremely scent-sensitive during her pregnancy. “But I think there’s a whole other group of people who are just using this to boss everybody around. They’re moving away from chemical sensitivity to chemical entitlement.”

Dawn Geisler, who cashiered at a natural food store in Ann Arbor, Mich., for 13 years, says she’s been led around by someone else’s nose again and again.

“[Customers] complained about the cashiers who wore deodorant. They complained that we had painted walls. Some even complained about the vinegar and water solution we used to clean the belt,” says the 35-year-old who now does data entry. “I know that people can be very sensitive to these things, but it seemed like some of these people were expecting the world to accommodate them. And that’s very hard.”

But Hirsch, the smell expert, says seizing control of a smelly situation may actually be part of what makes scent sensitive people feel better.

“People perceive smells as an intrusion on their body space,” he says. “But if you can control the smell, you’re much less bothered by it than if you can’t control it. It’s an instinctive perception, like a dog marking its territory.”

Hirsch says a person’s perception of a smell will also change depending on whether it’s coming from someone or something they like or not.

“You can clear a room with a bad smell and give people all kinds of headaches,” he says. “But you can put that same smell on a Disney ride and no one will complain.”

This principle, which Hirsch calls “hedonic perception,” may explain why a person’s nose may get out of joint about one smell but not another.

“I wear body butter and one of my coworkers will always start coughing and gagging every time she goes by my office,” says Maryam Diaab, a 40-year-old health care coordinator from Long Island, N.Y. “But there’s another woman who wears patchouli and she never says anything to her. I feel like she’s singling me out. I hope she coughs up a lung.”

War of the noses
Workplace nose wars are one reason Peter Post of the Emily Post Institute recommends minimal scent or no-scent policies on the job. But until those are in place, he says people with sensitivities great and small need to find a way to communicate their health issues while still respecting the rights of those around them.

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“We all have to get along in this world somehow and share this space,” he says. “And at what point do you make your allergies somebody else’s problem? If people have severe allergies, they have to figure out a way to interact with others without making that person change their life completely, too.”

Sending people laundry lists of “banned” beauty products or telling them to cover up their clothing with a trash bag is pushing the envelope, he says. “You’ve got to figure out another way to handle it.”

Fawn Fritzen, a business analyst from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada, was able to get her coworkers to forgo fragrance simply by asking nicely.

“Scent is a personal thing,” says the 29-year-old, who brought up the topic at a staff meeting after construction dust, and later, pregnancy wreaked havoc with her nose and lungs. “So if you’re going to ask someone to change their behavior it has to be done in a caring way. If I would have told them to make sure all their products at home were scent-free, that would have been going overboard. But it’s not a huge burden to ask people to change a few things, like not wearing perfume or a strong-smelling hand lotion.”

Luckily, for those who’ve come to dread the scent of a woman, a few things are changing.

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Scent-free policies have been embraced by workplaces, weddings, colleges, and conferences and both perfume sales and the willingness of women to wear it have declined. The sale of men’s and women’s fragrances fell one percent in 2007 according to the consumer product sales research firm NPD Group, which also found that the number of women who go without perfume rose from 13 percent in 2003 to 15 percent last year. In addition, natural products and unscented versions of old favorites are starting to grace more and more grocery store shelves.

Even a San Francisco dominatrix is able to resist the urge to bully her scent-sensitive clientele.

“Let me know during our confirmation call,” her Web site advises, “so that I may adjust my toilette accordingly.”

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