MOUNTAIN VIEW: That Smells Real  Nice 
_http://www.swvatoday.com/comments/mountain_view_that_smells_real_nice/sports/5023/_
 
(http://www.swvatoday.com/comments/mountain_view_that_smells_real_nice/sports/5023/)
  
 
By LIZA FIELD 
 
Sometimes I wonder what part of the human brain came up with  those 
dizzying, throat-stopping, rancid-odored drier-sheets and  air-“fresheners.” 
—The 
insane part, I reckon; the part happy to be unhinged from  reality. These 
chemical potions—usually dubbed names like “Country Fresh!” and  “Morning 
Sunshine!” and “Mountain Breeze!”—have nothing to do with the  countryside, 
mountains or fresh air, and are in fact implicated in everything  from 
nausea to respiratory disorders to skin problems to cancer. 
 
Want to dry off with a “Nature’s Fresh-n-Soft” slathered  “clean” towel? 
Alright! First, hold the towel to your face and inhale  deeply—Mmmm!—like 
the happy folks in the commercials! If you feel slightly  nauseated or need 
to cough, don’t worry; that’s a natural reaction to this  “Natural-Soft” 
toxic soup of unnatural ingredients. 
 
Since “natural” is by no means the point here, ignore your  body’s innate 
response and continue rubbing yourself down with this  “fresh-dried” 
slatherment of benzyl acetate, limonene, ethanol, chloroform,  pentane and 
other 
carcinogens and neurotoxins! 
 
And if you feel at all hesitant in coating yourself (and then  overpowering 
anyone who comes near you that day) with the industrial-strength  “fragrance
” that you can’t quite convince yourself smells divine, realize that  
these fragrances do serve a “real” purpose. 
Because the toxins used in “softening” fabric do heat up in  the drier and 
smell like a genuine, gosh-awful, chemical-plant smokestack,  strong 
perfumes are needed to mask that reality. And in order to convince  consumers 
to 
tolerate these strong, pretend-nothing’s-wrong-here perfumes, a  useful 
marketing ploy has proven handy: promote the negative characteristic as,  in 
fact, desirable! Shouldn’t all laundry smell like—mmmm!—funeral-parlor  
preservative? Ah, forever-fresh! 
 
This disparity between the product’s reality and the image it  promotes may 
seem comical (or depressing) spelled out this way. 
 
But that such a disparity regularly strikes us as  unremarkable—in fact, 
quite the usual—indicates something of how normalized  we’ve become to the 
blatantly-fake, and how easily we collude in the enterprise  of calling one 
thing by a completely contrary label and collectively agreeing  that Yes, like 
the emperor’s new clothes, it is wonderfully so…so…what-it-isn’t!  Quite 
a few conditioners, deodorants and skin lotions (with names like  “
safe-stuff,” “healing balm” and “pure-guard”) belong in the same category,  
reeking 
of putrid chestnut blossoms and adding a variety of chemical stiffeners  or 
softeners, propylene glycols and aluminums and formaldehydes known to 
impair  human health. 
 
Since the skin is a thin, widespread organ meant to expel  toxins rather 
than be slathered in them, our common use of toxin-laden  cosmetics, lotions, 
drier sheets, nail polishes and hair conditioners is one of  the 
immunity-compromising practices implicated in rising cancer rates. 
 
Should the representation of a toxic chemical-bath as  “Nature’s Down-Home 
Pure-itude!” be outlawed, then, since it encourages the  consumer to 
inhale, wear and sleep in a cloud of carcinogens? 
 
Deregulation-enthusiasts like Rush Limbaugh would say “No.”  This is 
America; everyone has the right to make a buck however he chooses,  whether by 
deception or truth. And since money is of more worth than  unmarketable values 
like truth, in the free-enterprise system that seems to  comprise the whole 
of our reality, we can’t go around making laws that impair  our pursuit of 
it. How could deception be regulated anyhow? Deception (and the  eagerness 
to be deceived) has been around at least as long as the earliest  stories of 
man. According to Genesis, Eve quickly reckoned the serpent was  promoting 
something good-for-her. Esau seemed happy to trade his birthright for  a mess 
of potage, and Moses easily duped the fed-up, tired-of-frogs Pharaoh into  
letting the Israelites leave town for a small escapade. 
 
Something in us apparently wants to be deceived. We want to  believe we can 
really buy fresh countryside in an aerosol can, or bring back a  happy, 
rural childhood by using drier sheets labeled “Country Mornings.” 
 
Certainly the false prophets that Jeremiah and other Hebrew  figures railed 
against would have been out-of-business had the people not said  “Preach to 
us soft things. Speak to us of ease!” We want to be told there’s no  
problem, and thus avoid the pain of change—an illusory goal in itself. 
More than any other species, humankind seems to have a  profound gift for 
self-deception. While it may have evolved as a coping  mechanism to deal with 
intolerable conditions, we seem often to make liberal use  of it in order 
to avoid the pain of facing any disagreeable reality. But reality  is 
innately healthful, since avoidance of reality would require life, itself, to  
become unreal. More on this really endless topic, next time. 
 
Reader Reaction: 
This commentary hit home with a bang. I live in a small town  in the middle 
of Montana, and I hate stepping outside expecting the fresh air  this area 
is known for, and instead getting a nose full of dryer sheet sludge. 
 
Not only is it not good for anyone to breathe, but most of the  time it’s 
like a cup of coffee with 30 spoons of sugar — a hint of something  maybe 
recognizable but totally overrun with some kind of chemical cloud. 
 
And it can beat up on anyone who suffers from asthma or RADS  or a damaged 
metabolic system. Thanks, and keep writing. 
 
 
 
Posted by MontanaJohn from Montana  on  04/18   at  07:09 PM
 
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