Non-Scents in the Workplace?

So, which major U.S. city would you expect to ban municipal employees from wearing perfume, cologne, aftershave, and even deodorant to work? If you picked the Motor City, you are - ironically - absolutely right.

In 2008, a Detroit city planner filed a lawsuit claiming a co-worker’s perfume made it challenging for her to do her job. Susan McBride filed her lawsuit under the American with Disabilities Act, and was awarded $100,000. The civil suit sparked the city of Detroit to make it official. A notice will go into the new employee handbook and be written in the Americans with Disabilities Act training, along with warning placards throughout the three buildings, which include the Cadillac Square Building, Coleman A. Young Municipal Center and First National Building, asking employees to “refrain from wearing scented products.” The ban will also include scented candles, lotions, perfume samples from magazines, and spray or solid air fresheners.

“One of the things the city is going to have to figure out is how they enforce the policy they’ve agreed to,” said attorney John Holmquist. “The city is going to have to get involved in hygiene, I’d guess you’d say, which no employer wants to get involved in.”

Detroit appears to be the only major city - not only in the U.S. but on the entire North American continent - to enact such a ban. In the past, two Canadian cities - Halifax and Ottawa - have flirted with scent restrictions, but neither ever gained any traction.

Detroit’s decision to ban employees from using any scented products in the workplace has sparked an national controversy about how far is too far. With summer on the way, it seems likely that Detroit might at the very least need to re-think their inclusion of “deodorant” on the fragrance hit list.

Sniffing Out the Bad Guys

After Richard Reid’s bumbling 2001 attempt to destroy a commercial aircraft in-flight by detonating explosives hidden in his shoe, political satirist Bill Maher speculated on Reid having waged a drunken bet with his friends that he could cause Americans to have to take off their shoes before boarding planes - and suggested that we should be grateful that Reid had chosen shoes rather than underwear. Of course, on Christmas Day of 2009, Maher’s satire proved prophetic, and the impracticality of conducting a visual search of every piece of attire of every passenger boarding every plane became glaringly apparent.

It could be that what the TSA really needs - rather than a line of naked passengers at the security gates - is a shot of German ingenuity. Researchers at Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft have developed a network of electronic sniffing devices that can not only smell explosive chemicals hidden on a person, but identify the carrier even as he moves through a crowd. The new intelligent system uses a network of “chemical noses” to capture the smell of the explosives, then the system processes the acquired data, correlates it with the individual’s movements, and ultimately tracks him down.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics (FKIE) in Wachtberg have built such a prototype security system and named it HAMLeT (Hazardous Material Localization and Person Tracking). “HAMLeT will alert security personnel to suspicious individuals,” says FKIE department head Dr. Wolfgang Koch. The sensor data fusion process employs complex algorithms which allow HAMLeT to build up a precise image of pedestrian flows and connect a particular smell with a specific individual. “HAMLeT’s real achievement is its ability to collate all the data and convert it into a clear and accurate overall picture.”

In a trial involving the German Armed Forces, researchers at the FKIE proved the system’s ability to track down five mock terrorists carrying hidden explosives, but the scientists admit that the system currently has a tendency to produce false positives, rendering it too cumbersome to yet deploy. But with some refinement of the algorithms and perhaps the incorporation of ever-improving face-recognition technology, systems like this could become commonplace anywhere large crowds gather, from airports to sports stadiums.

Wake Up and See the Coffee

A group of researchers at the University of Illinois have developed an inexpensive way to visualize scent through the use of specially developed inks. The colorimeter consists simply of a card with tiny polymer film squares that hold 36 designer dye drops, and came out of the lab of university chemist Kenneth Suslick. Each dye pigment changes color when exposed to certain chemicals, and the combination of the 36 exposes a unique chemical fingerprint for certain aromas, in effect painting a scent profile of the substance being measured.

Although the device will likely realize its greatest potential in security areas such as measuring toxic gasses, Dr. Suslick’s 17-year-old son best illustrated the myriad of potential uses when he applied it to the study of coffee aromas and was able to differentiate burned batches from perfectly perked.

Avatar: A Multisensory Smash!

It’s Smell-O-Vision Deluxe! Despite more than doubled ticket prices, the CJ-CGV theater chain in Korea is selling out showings of its 4D version of James Cameron’s Avatar. Incorporating moving seats, weather simulation, special lighting effects and olfactory enhancement including the smell of explosives, the Avatar 4D Experience has been so successful that the chain has added another three similarly equipped theaters.

The success of the multisensory Avatar experience has not been lost on Hollywood, which is planning a US-Korea joint venture to complete ten 4D Ride films this year.

Four Years Later, New York Mystery Stench Persists

It’s been over four years since the city of Bay Ridge, New York, spent $6.9 million to connect sewer lines along the Fort Hamilton Parkway in 2006, and more than four years of failed investigations into the mysterious rotten-egg stench which began wafting from the grates. Residents claim that the stink is so bad (some likening it to the smell of decomposing corpses) that it permeates the walls of their homes, and some have even moved away. “If you walk by, you’ll gag — that’s how bad it is,” said Community Board 10 District Manager Josephine Beckmann. Despite repeated counter-stink measures by the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Design and Construction — including nylon socks stuffed with pine-scented deodorizer that city workers dropped into the sewers in 2007 — the mystery stench persists.

This month, city officials ponied up the bucks to hire Webster Environmental Associates, which specializes in monitoring air and water flow from sewers, in hopes of finally isolating the source of the smell. “The odor is affecting residents’ quality of life all and despite city agencies’ best efforts, the cause is a mystery,” said Councilman Vince Gentile, who pushed for city funding to hire the inspectors from Webster. “It’s high time that the nuisance is taken care of.”

Heaven-Scent Disaster Relief

New York fragrance brand Bond No. 9 is lending a hand to earthquake victims by spreading the Scent of Peace to Haiti. For every bottle sold, Seeds of Peace - an organization that is dedicated to empowering young leaders from regions of conflict with the leadership skills required to advance reconciliation and coexistence - will receive a portion of the sales.

Winner in the Top 5 Finalists for 2007 Fragrance of the Year FiFi Award for Women’s Nouveau Niche Category, the Scent of Peace fragrance carries notes of bright florals and sweet citrus fruits blended with wood musk that’s packaged in a lilac frosted glass bottle etched with a dove. Not only is Scent of Peace a wonderful gift for a loved one or for yourself, it’s a heaven-scent opportunity to help out our friends in Haiti.

Use Common Scents to Fight the Winter Blues

With the festive holiday portion of the season passed, those same elements that created winter wonderland magic in December can lead to an unpleasant lethargy beginning in January known as seasonal affective disorder. Cheery turns to dreary as cold temperatures, gray skies, barren landscapes, shorter days, and reduced activity bring on feelings of sadness, depression, and general loss of energy. Add to this the inclination to shut ourselves indoors against the frigid outside air, sometimes in the cramped company of loved ones who we find much more lovable in shorter doses, and irritability also becomes a major factor of the Winter Blues.

Before you give up and just curl miserably into a corner waiting for April–or lose all patience with Aunt Ethel who has asked you for the twentieth time, and tell her that yes, as a matter of fact, those new Christmas stretch pants do make her butt look big–why not take the opportunity to treat yourself to a whiff of aromatic relief that might just thaw some of your frozen holiday spirit for the remaining winter months? Not only can certain essential oils reduce seasonal stress and depression, they can cleanse and freshen stale air and even improve spacial perception in a winter-sealed home.

Woodsy scents are excellent for warding off seasonal depression. As the gray days grow shorter and the dark nights grow longer, we yearn for the life and light of warm sunny days. It’s more than holiday tradition that has induced us, since ancient times, to adorn our indoors with the outdoors at the onset of the cold season with fragrant branches of refreshing evergreens like mistletoe, holly, pine and fir. Likewise, the rich, sweet aroma of a frankincense and myrrh based blend is meditative and relaxing to the winter-weary heart.

Citrus oils are particularly recommended, as their fresh uplifting scent can melt away the anxiety and lethargy brought on by long periods of relative confinement (the practice of doling out lemons to seamen on months-long voyages may well have done more than prevent scurvy, it may have inadvertently prevented a mutiny or two as well).

Other essential oils especially useful during winter months include eucalyptus, rosemary, peppermint, tea tree, ginger, cinnamon, bergamot, clary sage, chamomile, and lavender.

Disaster Preparedness on a Multisensory Scale

“I believe the simulation went really well,” said Patrick Schooler, director of the EMS department for the Community College of Aurora, speaking of a uniquely pungent mass casualty training exercise held on the morning of November 11th at the former Lowry Air Force Base. “We had positive feedback from the professionals and the students and from a learning standpoint everyone came away with the idea that there was valuable information gained from the experience.”

The exercise, which involved several metro organizations including the Community College of Aurora, Aurora Police, University of Colorado Denver and responders from Buckley Air Force Base, recreated a disaster — specifically multiple bombings in the area — down to the smallest details, including not only gory sights (fake blood, glass shard impalement, severed limbs, courtesy of the campus’s theatrical department) but also “olfactory cues for medical training” which include simulated odors of sewage, gunpowder, vomit, and burnt flesh. “When you have all of your senses engaged, it becomes a more real experience,” said Schooler.

The drill, part of a training program for the Community College of Aurora’s First Responder Training Program, included about 400 participants, including acting students playing the roles of victims, protestors and news media.

“At the community college we have all these different resources that were involved. The film school was one, and the theater department was another,” said Clinton Andersen, Critical Incident Theater director for the college. “I think what topped it off was that the Army has actually been developing smells.”

Wafting Across Party Lines

Differences between the current and previous First Ladies are numerous, but there is at least one lingering similarity - their choice of scent. Michelle Obama is partial to the House of Creed’s fragrance Love in White, according to the Huffington Post, which made its debut in the United States rather than France in 2005 when the first bottle was presented to then-First Lady Laura Bush.

Michael Jackson: A Multisensory Performer

Not only was Michael Jackson amazing to watch and to hear, as it turns out. According to pretty much everyone involved in his This Is It tour, he also smelled amazing.

“He’d have these custom fragrances done for him and designers would send him fragrances and he would tend to mix them rather innocently,” says choreographer Travis Payne. “And it just always smelled great. You’d know if he was approaching, or it would linger after he was gone.”

Dancer Timor Steffens concurs. “His smell was so present, when I hugged him and let go of him and he walked away, I still had his smell on my hand. I was smelling my hand like, ‘That’s Michael! That’s Michael!’ ”

“One time, we (the dancers) were sitting on the stage waiting for him (Jackson) to show up,” relates another This Is It performer fondly. “Timor goes, ‘Yo! I smell Michael! I smell Michael!’ He was lying down on the stage and he sat up, and Michael was walking in right as he said it.”

That Jackson liked to smell unique, apparently, did not mean that he liked to smell predictable. “The next day,” grins Timor, recalling the incident, “he had a different cologne on.”

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