Artificial fragrances and my workplace

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I am really struggling at work. I'm a nurse in a care home and these places are full of these spray air fresheners and reed diffusers. They really affect me, both from a sensory point of view and they also make me feel sick, dizzy, headachy and affect my sinuses.

Management know about it and it was meant to have been dealt with, but one of the care workers is obsessed with the damn things and buys them on behalf of her one to one clients. She knows they affect me, but doesn't know I'm autistic. I hate moaning to management. I've had to leave jobs and turn down jobs in the past because of them. They're blighting my life.

I dunno whether it's time to just quit nursing.

I’m sorry you’re going through this. I developed quite bad chemical sensitivities 5 years ago. I don’t have any advice for handling work place stuff, I had issues at 2 jobs that would compound with other issues and I eventually quit. Avoidance was the only thing that worked for me and now I work from home. For brief exposures taking a sublingual niacin keeps my reaction less severe for a brief time. It may sound weird but I just found out that I had an atlas subluxation and once it was treated my chemical sensitivities decreased a huge amount. I still don’t like the things I used to react to (laundry soap, dryer sheets, perfume, air fresheners) but I don’t have the same fight or flight, cognitive shutdown from them. Apparently atlas subluxations are pretty common from car accidents, falls, high impact sports, having loose/hypermobile joints or even just from being born. It may not apply to you but I thought I’d mention it in case it could help you or anyone else reading. Chemical sensitivities can make your life very miserable and I thought I was stuck with it for life.

I use to have a hypersensitivity to smell. Many things would trigger it including artificial fragrances. I am sensitive to the chemicals that are used to treat new clothing. So much so that I would sometimes have to leave a clothing store in order to not get overwhelmed.

Sometimes either getting a cold or this hypersensitivity would lead to bronchitis. It was so bad that my lungs would rattle and I would see stars when I coughed. I had asthma and was on two forms of prescription medication to treat it.

Anyways I have significantly reduced my hypersensitivity to these smells and currently I am more in the normal range. So in looking back over what has changed, I would attribute this to 2 items.

1. I was obese and had RNY gastric bypass weight loss surgery 6 years ago and lost 120 pounds. It placed my asthma in remission about 2 years post-op. I have been off all my asthma prescription medicine for the past 4 years now.

2. Beginning about as decade ago, I started taking a supplement called Juvenon. The tablets contain Acetyl L-Carnitine and Alpha Lipoic Acid. It has an immediate effect of improving my lung function by over 100 on my peak flow meter.

Although I still can smell the artificial in artificial fragrances, I have begun to love the smell of natural essential oils. I use them quite a bit nowadays. They are really marvelous. I use them to treat colds and a many other ailments.

Turn a doctor letter into human resources

Lawsuits

while my methods may not work for everybody, what I do is remove the offensive device whenever I encounter them. I don't suggest throwing them away though, it pisses people off. just pile them up outside, people get the point eventually. on a side note most air fresheners contain dichlorobenzene which is found in pesticides and is the main ingredient in mothballs. in my opinion pumping extra chemicals into the air in a medical facility is criminal.

I have extreme empathy for you OP in that I wish I could go to your place of work and rid you of the offensive chemicals myself. I'm so sorry you're having to go through this. I like the doctor note idea if it's at all possible. If they're short staffed, what if you went to HR and said that you like your job, but due to your chemical sensitivities you can't work under those conditions and they're debilitating to you. If it continues then you'd have to make a decision. I could not work under those conditions.

I have the same situation in my workplace (besides other problems). I'm trying to quit.