When Scents Make Sense...to Avoid: Understanding Fragrance Allergies, MCAS and Chemical Sensitivities
- Jul 8
- 11 min read
Updated: Jul 26
by Stacie Filer
Imagine walking into a store, a church, or even your friend’s house, only to be hit with a wave of scent that feels like you just got tackled by a flowery linebacker. Your eyes water. Your throat closes up. Your head pounds. And all you want to do is escape.
If you are nodding in miserable recognition, you are not alone and there is no better time to talk about it than now. July 8th is National Allergy Day, a moment to acknowledge the countless individuals whose immune systems go into battle mode over everyday substances.
But for some of us, allergies do not just mean pollen, pets, or peanuts. They mean scented candles, air fresheners, perfume, shampoo, new paint, cooking smells, and cleaning sprays. They mean walking into a room and instantly feeling dizzy, inflamed, nauseated, or completely wrecked.
Fragrance allergies, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) are not just annoying, they are disabling. They can hijack your life, one scented product at a time.
So in the spirit of awareness and self-preservation, grab your iced latte, unscented of course, and settle in as we explore what these conditions really are, how they affect people like me, and even how they are impacting honey bees. Yes, seriously, bees.
Let us take a deep, clean breath and begin.
🤧What Are Fragrance Allergies, MCAS, and MCS?
Fragrance Allergy, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) are distinct conditions, though they can sometimes overlap or be confused with each other. Fragrance allergy is a specific immune response to certain fragrance chemicals, while MCAS involves the over-activation of mast cells and the release of mediators, and MCS is a diagnosis characterized by chronic symptoms triggered by low levels of various chemicals.
1. Fragrance Allergy:
Definition:
A specific immune response (type I hypersensitivity) to fragrance chemicals, such as those found in perfumes, lotions, and other scented products.
Mechanism:
The immune system mistakenly identifies a fragrance ingredient as harmful and mounts an allergic response, releasing chemicals like histamine.
Symptoms:
Can range from mild skin irritation, sneezing, and runny nose to more severe reactions like hives, swelling, and difficulty breathing.
Trigger:
Primarily triggered by specific fragrance ingredients.
2. Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS):
Definition:
A condition where mast cells, which are part of the immune system, inappropriately release mediators (like histamine, cytokines, etc.) causing various symptoms.
Mechanism:
Mast cells are overly reactive and release mediators even without a clear allergy trigger or in response to a wide range of triggers, including fragrances, foods, or stress.
Symptoms:
Symptoms are diverse and can affect multiple organ systems, including skin, gastrointestinal tract, respiratory system, and neurological system.
Trigger:
Can be triggered by a variety of stimuli, including fragrances, foods, medications, infections, temperature, and even stress.
3. Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS):
Definition:
A diagnosis characterized by chronic, reproducible symptoms following exposure to low levels of commonly used chemicals, often including fragrances.
Mechanism:
While the exact mechanism is not fully understood, it is thought to involve a heightened sensitivity to chemicals, potentially affecting the nervous system and immune system.
Symptoms:
Symptoms are diverse and can include fatigue, headaches, nausea, dizziness, and other neurological and physical symptoms.
Trigger:
Triggered by a wide range of chemicals, including those found in cleaning products, fragrances, and building materials.
In summary: Fragrance allergy is a specific immune reaction to fragrance chemicals, while MCAS involves the dysregulation of mast cells and their mediators, and MCS is a diagnosis of chemical intolerance. All these conditions are underrecognized, often misunderstood, and deeply disruptive to everyday life.
👃 It’s Not Just “In Their Head”
There’s a big difference between “not liking” a smell and being harmed by it. Many commercial products release volatile organic compounds (VOCs), airborne chemicals that can cause inflammation, respiratory distress, nervous system disruption, and even long-term damage to organs. And here’s the kicker: these chemicals don’t just affect people with sensitivities.
Studies show that everyone absorbs and reacts to synthetic chemicals to some degree. You may not feel it now, but that doesn’t mean your body isn't dealing with the fallout. For those with fragrance allergies, MCAS, or MCS, the damage just happens faster and louder.
Here are just some of the findings:
A single analysis of 25 scented consumer products revealed over 100 VOCs—not just in “synthetic” items, but in so-called “green,” “natural,” and “organic” ones
Another review found that these fragrances “impair rather than improve indoor air quality” and that <3% of emissions are listed on labels
Indoor VOCs—found in products, paint, cleaning agents—can be up to 10× higher than outdoors, contributing to headaches, ocular and respiratory irritation, and organ damage.
Air fresheners and candles release hazardous compounds like benzene, formaldehyde, phthalates, and particulate matter—linked to migraines, asthma attacks, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and hormone disruption .
Bottom line: even people without sensitivities absorb and react to these synthetic chemicals—they just don’t hear the alarm bell as quickly.
⚠️The Common Culprits
🧴Perfumes and colognes- emit dozens of VOCs, including known allergens like linalool, limonene, citronellol, and isoeugenol
🕯️Scented candles & wax melts- pollute indoor air with VOCs and particulate matter; wax melts sometimes emit three times more nanoparticles than candles. (however, burning beewax emits much lower VOCS)
🌸Air fresheners and plug-ins- many contain carcinogenic MOCA, phthalates, and VOCs that aggravate asthma and disrupt hormones
🧺Laundry Products including detergents, scent beads, and dryer sheets- often full of fragrance masking chemicals and sensitive triggers
🧪Cleaning products- can contain harmful chemicals that evaporate at room temperature and can negatively impact indoor air quality and human health. These are released into the air during cleaning and can be inhaled, potentially causing respiratory problems, allergic reactions, and other health issues.
💄Personal care items (shampoos, dry shampoo, lotions, sunscreen, deodorants, feminine hygiene products, etc)- Examples include benzene (found in dry shampoo and sunscreen), formaldehyde (found in shampoos, conditioners, and nail polish), and methylene chloride (found in hairspray and spray deodorants).
🛋️New paint, furniture, or carpet (off-gassing)- While often associated with the "new item smell", some VOCs are odorless. Potential Health Impacts:
Short-term: Eye, nose, and throat irritation, headaches, dizziness, and fatigue.
Long-term: Respiratory problems, liver and kidney damage, and even certain cancers, like those potentially linked to formaldehyde.
🧼Essential Oils- Yes, Even many “natural” products are greenwashed with synthetic fragrances and hidden chemicals. Essential oils can impact indoor air quality. While some VOCs are naturally occurring and even beneficial, others can be harmful, potentially causing respiratory irritation, headaches, or other health issues. Some of the most prevalent VOCs found in essential oils include alpha-pinene, limonene, linalool, acetone, ethanol, and acetaldehyde. When certain VOCs combine, they can create secondary pollutants like formaldehyde, which is a known irritant.
Examples of essential oils and their VOCs:
Eucalyptus oil: Contains VOCs like eucalyptol.
Lavender oil: Contains linalool and other VOCs.
Peppermint oil: Contains VOCs like menthol.
Tea tree oil: Contains terpinen-4-ol and other VOCs.
🐝 What About the Bees? Fragrance & VOCs in Their World
You already know synthetic fragrances affect people—but did you know they mess with honey bees too?
Bees rely on their sense of smell for almost everything: finding flowers, communicating with hive mates, and navigating. But artificial scents and pollutants can seriously derail them.
🚫 Polluted Scents, Confused Bees
Ozone and air pollutants chemically modify floral scent VOCs, causing bees to lose up to 90% of their ability to detect them—meaning less nectar and weaker colonies
🏠 Hive Contamination
Hive air can contain hundreds of synthetic compounds—from traffic, household products, and pesticides. Some reach toxic levels harming queen survival and overall colony health .
🧪 Pesticides Scramble Sense
Neonicotinoids like imidacloprid alter bee antennal reactions to floral scents and pheromones, disrupting foraging and hive communication .
🌎 Shared Air, Shared Burden
The same VOCs that rattle our health rattle bees too. Our scent pollution isn't isolated—it ripples through ecosystems.
👪The Human Cost
For people living with fragrance allergies, MCAS, or MCAS, even simple outings become strategic missions. A trip to the grocery store may mean wearing a mask. Going to a wedding? Impossible if someone’s doused in cologne. Visiting a friend’s home? Only if their cleaning routine is scent-free. Doctors' offices? You'd think would be safer, but air fresheners, cleaning products, and more are used (although some do have "Fragrance-Free Offices"). The world feels unsafe, even hostile. Isolation, depression, job loss, and medical expenses often follow. The mental health toll is enormous and invisible.
❓So What Can We Do? (Hint: A Lot)
You don’t have to ditch your favorite soap today, but small shifts in awareness and habits can make a huge difference:
🧼 Switch to fragrance-free products.
Look for labels that say fragrance-free, not just unscented (which can still contain masking fragrances).
🌿 Choose truly natural cleaning methods.
Vinegar and baking soda are great alternatives. Be careful with essential oils, as noted above, those can cause many issues too.
🏠 Respect scent-free spaces.
If an event, church, or building asks for fragrance-free visitors, honor that. It could mean someone else can attend without many issues.
🗣️ Speak up with kindness.
If you run a business, workplace, or gathering space, consider offering fragrance-free zones or even adopting a fragrance-free policy. Signs that say, “Thank you for not wearing scented products” aren’t exclusionary, they’re life-giving to someone who might otherwise have to leave. If you're not in charge, but part of a group or community, kindly suggesting a fragrance-free policy can open the door to important conversations. You're not being picky, you’re being protective.
👃 Rethink what “clean” smells like.
Marketing has taught us that “clean” equals “pine-scented,” “ocean breeze,” or “spring meadow.” But truly clean environments have no lingering scent at all. What you're often smelling are harsh chemical compounds left behind. Try this: wash clothes with fragrance-free detergent (we use baking soda) and air-dry near an open window, or better yet, outside with the sunshine, cool breeze, and buzzing bees. Your nose, and lungs, will thank you. Nothing smells better than nothing!
💡 Educate yourself and others.
Fragrance chemicals are protected as "trade secrets" in the U.S., which means companies don’t have to list what's in them. That’s right, hundreds of chemicals can be bundled under the word “fragrance,” and many of them are known endocrine disruptors, neurotoxins, or allergens. The more you learn, the more you can choose wisely and share gently with others who may not yet realize the risk.
🤝 Be an ally.
If someone in your life tells you they have chemical or scent sensitivities, believe them. Ask what they need to feel safe in your home or space. Maybe it's switching out a laundry soap, cracking a window, visiting outside, or giving a heads-up about cleaning products you use. These small efforts might feel like nothing to you, but they can mean everything to someone else.
💛 Stacie’s Story: Living with MCAS in a Scent-Saturated World
This isn’t just a topic I care about, it’s my everyday reality.
Living with MCAS has completely reshaped my life. It didn’t happen overnight, but gradually, I began noticing that exposure to things like perfumes, scented detergents, air fresheners, even certain shampoos, left me feeling dizzy, nauseated, and overwhelmed with fatigue. Then came the headaches, burning eyes, tightness in my chest, and difficulty breathing and thinking clearly. Sometimes I’d feel like I had the flu after just a few minutes of exposure. Other times, it felt like my body was on high alert, panicked, inflamed, and exhausted, all because someone nearby wore cologne or used a strong cleaning spray. The worst were anaphylatic symptoms, which were beyond scary.
But it didn’t stop with perfumes or cleaning products. I began reacting to cooking odors, too. Things like cooking meats, certain spices, or other kitchen smells could send my system into a tailspin. Even something as normal as a family dinner could leave me unable to function for the rest of the day. The scent of onions sautéing or a neighbor’s grill wafting through an open window wasn’t just unpleasant, it was dangerous. And with MCAS I never know what scent is going to send me over the limit.
Because of all this, we also had to stop cooking any meat products and using other ingredients in our home, as cooking seemed to intensify the problem. My husband, Tom (aka "The Beekeeper") has had to cook and eat his main proteins for lunch at work for the past 7 yeats. Family celebrations have been reduced to some favorite recipes I can tolerate (I can't eat them due to reactions, but that's a whole other issue) It is challenging at times, but you do what you have to do to survive. Thankfully my family has done so much to help my life be somewhat normal. I couldn't do this without any of them.
If you know me at all and how I loved to entertain and have people over for parties, etc., you can imagine how difficult all of this is. My home is my safe place. In order for anyone to come to visit, they have to come unscented and pass the sniff-test. We have come up with ways to work around my health issues somewhat including Porch Kitchen and Porch Visits. My porch allows me a safer place for some cooking or visits and that helps keep my home more scent-free. (Obviously, those are not really possible during our cold and snowy Finger Lakes winters.haha) It definitely gets lonely, as following the scent-free protocol for visitor's can be a lot to ask. I so appreciate anyone who gives it a try though.
As my sensitivities grew more severe over the years, I had to stop going out in public. I can no longer safely shop in stores, attend events, or visit people’s homes. I wear a respirator-style air filter mask for essential medical appointments, but even with it, I often experience setbacks afterward. The world has become something I have to navigate cautiously, from behind closed windows and carefully filtered air. Ever see the movie "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble"? Yeah, that's how I feel sometimes. I long for the day that I am healed from this mess. It’s not that I don’t want to go out and participate in life, I just physically can’t without risking my health. What many people experience as daily conveniences- cleaners, laundry products, air fresheners, takeout- have become invisible barriers that keep me from living freely.
This is the part that’s hardest to explain: I may look “fine.”, but my body is constantly working overtime to detox and defend itself from things most people never even notice. It’s exhausting, isolating, and sometimes deeply discouraging. But it’s also taught me the importance of advocacy, awareness, and community as well as-
"Accommodation" — making changes to fit my needs
"Resilience" — bouncing back and thriving despite obstacles
"Innovation" — creatively finding new solutions
"Ingenuity" — cleverness in solving problems
"Resourcefulness" — making the best use of what I have
I don’t share my story for pity, I share it for understanding. Because chances are, you know someone like me, whether they’ve told you or not. And your small choices, like going fragrance-free or skipping the scented candles, can make a huge difference in someone else’s quality of life.
⛅️ Clearing the Air Together
If you’ve made it this far, thank you. You’ve already taken the first step: listening.
Fragrance allergies and chemical sensitivities may be invisible, but they are very real and growing more common. Whether you live with these challenges or care about someone who does, know this: you have the power to make the world safer and more welcoming.
Choosing fragrance-free products, avoiding synthetic air fresheners, and being mindful of cooking odors in shared spaces aren’t grand gestures, but they create grand results. For someone like me, they can mean the difference between participating in life or being left out of it. And if you don't know anyone with this issue, do it for the bees. They already have enough things to deal with.
Empathy doesn’t require you to feel what someone else feels, it just asks you to believe them when they say it hurts.
So let’s lead with kindness. Let’s make room for clean air, open hearts, and lives that thrive, even for those of us living a bit more carefully than others.
And remember: there’s nothing more refreshing than a breath of truly fresh air, ask the bees and me! 💛
If you struggle with fragrance allergies, MCAS or MCS please share your story in the comments. It's always helpful to know you are not alone in this battle.
Until Next Time- Stay Sweet!
Stacie (& Tom too!)
Tom and Stacie, are co-owners of Fingerlakes Honey Company located in the bee-utiful Fingerlakes region of New York State. When they are not tending to all things bees, they enjoy spending time with their grown children, their dog, and lots of chickens on their homestead. They love learning more about the bees they foster and helping others to learn more about them as well.
Your story is very relatable as I am dealing with my own issues. Trying desperately to find a provider who can help me navigate this horrible condition. Mine has progressed to the point of passing out and I stop breathing. God bless you and thank you for sharing your knowledge and your story!