New Scented Yarn is a Baaaaad Idea
An open letter to Lily Sugar'n Cream upon learning about their new line of fragranced Sugar'n Cream yarn:
"Introducing Lily Sugar'n Cream Scents. Your favorite yarn, now available in your favorite scents! As you knit and crochet with the yarn. the scent of your choice is gently released. Lily Sugar'n Cream Scents is created using micro-encapsulated essential oils, which are thought to reinforce harmony and well-being of body, mind, and spirit. From Vanilla, to Lavender, to Camomile, the capsules release gradually - as you knit and crochet, and later after your project is complete. adding a pleasant aroma in your space. Lily Sugar'n Cream Scents are perfect for scented sachets, gifts and special treats for yourself."
Dear Lily,
I just found out about your Sugar'n Cream Scented yarn.
This is a spectacularly BAD idea. There are more people in this country who are chemically sensitive to fragrances than there are people with diabetes! For all of us who are knitters and crocheters, you've just made it that much more difficult to go shopping in stores or even buy by mail or over the Interet, as the latter two purchases, though nothing scented was purchased, the yarns will have absorbed fragrance from being stored in the same rack--even just in the same room--as the fragranced yarn.
You should have done your research first and not jumped on the Glade-Febreeze "everything's got to be perfumed or there's something wrong with you" bandwagon.
Not So Sexy: Hidden Chemical in Perfumes and Colognes
What's That Smell? Hidden Fragrance Found in Cleaning Products
EPA Design for the Environment Program Criteria for Fragrances
Navigating through life is already hard enough for chemically sensitive people. You've just made it increasingly unsafe for people like me--knitters and the people we knit for.
Melissa Kaplan
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If you'd like to write your own letter to Lily, here's the link to their Contact Us page.
"Introducing Lily Sugar'n Cream Scents. Your favorite yarn, now available in your favorite scents! As you knit and crochet with the yarn. the scent of your choice is gently released. Lily Sugar'n Cream Scents is created using micro-encapsulated essential oils, which are thought to reinforce harmony and well-being of body, mind, and spirit. From Vanilla, to Lavender, to Camomile, the capsules release gradually - as you knit and crochet, and later after your project is complete. adding a pleasant aroma in your space. Lily Sugar'n Cream Scents are perfect for scented sachets, gifts and special treats for yourself."
Dear Lily,
I just found out about your Sugar'n Cream Scented yarn.
This is a spectacularly BAD idea. There are more people in this country who are chemically sensitive to fragrances than there are people with diabetes! For all of us who are knitters and crocheters, you've just made it that much more difficult to go shopping in stores or even buy by mail or over the Interet, as the latter two purchases, though nothing scented was purchased, the yarns will have absorbed fragrance from being stored in the same rack--even just in the same room--as the fragranced yarn.
You should have done your research first and not jumped on the Glade-Febreeze "everything's got to be perfumed or there's something wrong with you" bandwagon.
Not So Sexy: Hidden Chemical in Perfumes and Colognes
What's That Smell? Hidden Fragrance Found in Cleaning Products
EPA Design for the Environment Program Criteria for Fragrances
Navigating through life is already hard enough for chemically sensitive people. You've just made it increasingly unsafe for people like me--knitters and the people we knit for.
Melissa Kaplan
---
If you'd like to write your own letter to Lily, here's the link to their Contact Us page.
Labels: chemical sensitivity, fragrance, mcs, toxic chemicals
posted by Melissa at 10:30 AM
5 Comments:
New Scented Yarn is a great idea! I have very sensitive skin and am also asthmatic and the yarn did not bother me at all. I knitted and crocheted with all of the scents and felt so good while doing so. I plan to buy the scented yarn all the time. Keep making more colors and more scents. Thank you.
You, like many people, are under the mistaken impression that chemical sensitivity is an allergy or asthma, both of which can be controlled or remediated by the appropriate prescription or over-the-counter drug.
Chemical sensitivity is NOT asthma or allergy. It is an autoimmune response to a chemical that affects the body in a variety of ways, depending on the chemical and the patient. Symptoms I typically experience include rapid onset of migraines (which I do not ever have except from some chemical exposures), nose bleeds, loss of voice, rapid onset cognitive dysfunction, including increased difficulty in word finding and speaking, and crushing fatigue that may last for days. There are people who end up bedridden for days or weeks after a brief exposure to perfume (including "natural" essential oils), cleaning chemicals, printing chemicals (which cause blisters on my skin where the chemicals have touched, as well as bronchitis and loss of voice). Catatonia is not an uncommon reaction.
So, while it's nice that you have no problem with it, there are more people in this country with chemical sensitivity than there are diabetics (according to a Newsweek article published in 2000, since which time there is an increase in the recognition based on science that chemicals, even fragrances typically used in personal care and cleaning products (and that "new car" smell and all the other air freshening products) are in fact harmful and adversely affecting and sickening more people the more ubiquitous they become in our home, work, school, and public environments.
Actually the scented yarn that I've come across is very lightly scented. It can not be smelled just walking by - you actually have to pick it up and put it within inches of your face to smell it.
From someone who can not walk down an aisle of cleaning products without wheezing and sneezing - this product is a non-issue.
This yarn causes me less problems then being in contact with wool yarns. ( i.e. the scented yarn causes no itching, no sneezing, no hives - just a smell that's more natural than chemical)
That said - I won't buy this as I see no use for a scented yarn
"Lightly scented" is like telling someone in a wheelchair that "there's just a few steps" when they are trying to access a place you can go into and out of easily.
People who do not suffer from chemical sensitivity cannot smell chemicals that those who are can, and one does not have to be able to actually smell the odor of a chemical to suffer adverse effects.
A friend of mine was sympathetic to my CS but didn't really get it for years, until after she was exposed to an accidental high concentration of cleaning products at her workplace. Since then, she, too, is chemically sensitive, and, unfortunately, now 'gets' it.
I have another friend who, after returning to knitting after decades of not knitting, has found that she cannot knit with any yarn containing animal fibers or soy fibers. (Too bad bamboo yarns don't have the same 'give' that animal fibers to - that would make bamboo a perfect fiber--sustainable, takes dye wonderfully, with a lovely hand!) Another friend of mine gets rashes from anything containing polyester.
However, the sensitivity to animal, soy and polyester fibers is not a chemical sensitivity in that if you do not touch it, the fibers will not bother you: you can breathe normally in a room with them without suffering any adverse effects. With chemical sensitivity, just breathing air containing molecules of the problematic chemical, or in which is suspended particulates which have some of these molecules attached, is enough to cause a reaction.
"Health can be snatched away at the rate of parts per billion." - Nicholas Ashford
That's chemical sensitivity.
I just came across the scented yarn for the first time. I actually googled it to write to Lily to express my disgust.
We saw a very cute color that was perfect for a project my daughter wants to do - but we can't buy the yarn.
Even if my husband did not have chemical sensitivities, I would not buy scented yarn.
The more of this junk there is out there for people to smell, the more people will have chemical sensitivities.
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