Scented products cause indoor air pollution on par with car exhaust

This was my initial thought too. Like if I grow a bunch of nice smelling flowers, and crack open a window during the spring. Am I worse or better off than purchasing a scented candle.

Should we as a species stop nice smelling things entirely.

Imagine how much “air pollution” one inhales when taking a big whiff of a nice curry.

The sub-species that I belong to does stop smelling those nice things entirely as my nose clogs up, eyes water, and convulsions known to many as "sneezing" take over my body.

Don't you mean an hour after consuming said curry? :)

Same here, including incense and most in home fireplaces.

Actually, it's the cooking that pollutes your indoor air the most. Once the food is on the table, most of the damage is already done.

No, but I wouldn't complain if we stopped scenting every damn cleaning and hygiene product. Please, no scented hand soap, or laundry detergent, or especially dish detergent. I'm not gonna complain if people want scented conditioner, but you probably don't need scented shampoo if you're going to condition anyways.

Intuitively I'd guess the scented candle is worse than the flowers. I doubt soot and vaporized wax are good for you.

Both exist tbh. My more medicinal shampoos smell of nothing or bad (assuming because of the active contents and not to smell more medicinal). Sensitive shampoo/detergents seem to be very lightly scented. Kinda just enough to where you can check if your kid washed their hands by smelling them but it doesn't release a citrus bomb around the sink.

The scent thing can be useful for a forgetful person wondering "did I wash my hands recently?"

I just had this discussion with my wife yesterday as she bought a scented product for the dishwasher so it does not smell bad. That stuff has ruined several travel mugs etc as i can not get rid of the smell. When i drink coffee, i want to smell coffee, not some lemon whatever. And it always ends up with me being the bad guy for not being reasonable.

We already had the same conversation about the automatic perfume spray machines; we had them over the dinner table, on hallways etc. Not so great when you are a tall person, and all of a sudden you get sprayed in your face because you happen to be standing in-front of the machine.

When we were little my dad used to check our hands before eating by smelling them, that's why I mentioned it. In retrospective it seems like a great feature since he didn't have to watch us do it and could with time start doing only occasional checks to see if we'll start slipping until we got the habit.

If the dishwasher smells bad without using a scented product, that sounds like a problem with the dishwasher's maintenance.

Yup just needed some cleaning

Lots of products smell bad if they're truly unscented. "Unscented" is an effect that is often achieved with... scent. So, still putting stuff in the air for you to smell, but to counter other odors so it smells neutral to you.

Yeah, they have filters that get nasty without regular cleaning. Physically clean that out, bleach the hell out of it, and run a self-clean cycle or two if the washer has one.

If someone's not cleaning that, I also have some bad news for them about their washing machine.

Sure but, the core of the issue here is demonising "microparticles" entering your nose without any specifics.

I need microparticles in my nose so that it can detect things. Some of the things it detects are pleasant. If one of those pleasant things should stop producing microparticles for health reasons, make that argument instead?