California Air Resources Board

There is something in the laundry exhaust, when an unknown subset of laundry products are used, which creates a very local cloud (aerosol, not gas), which not only drifts through open windows of nearby residences, but also settles for hours against the walls (and more importantly air infiltration points) of people's apartments and homes.

I don't think we know exactly what it is in that laundry exhaust which is laying people low. And whatever it is, is in a concentration low enough that conventional toxicology and medicine will say it shouldn't be affecting people the way it is.

As much as I wish the answer was as simple as mandating dehumidifying dryers and banning dryer exhausts, those machines simply don't work well enough yet. Maybe for two adults in a condo in a high rise...but not for a family.

I'm pretty sure it's one of the ingredients of the fragrance in one or more products, or that in synergy with one of the newer additives.

So here's what I suggest:

First, regulations need to require that every single ingredient of every fragrance must be disclosed, if that fragrance is going to exit into a public space. A dryer vent to outside exits to a public space. A "designer fragrance" in the public lobby of a hotel or conference center is also a public space. So is the exhaust of the shared laundry room of an apartment complex, and the exhaust of a laundromat.

After 30 years of my family and I being sensitive, my gut instinct is that my extreme adverse reaction to some fragranced laundry exhaust is to one or more common enhancers (fragrance ingredients which, analogous to MSG in food, make a given dose of the fragrance smell "more"). The enhancer does its job locally in my nose, but I have an adverse systemic reaction after that. If I could narrow down what ingredients are not present when I don't react, that's a hint toward what I'm reacting to.

The second is that the aggregate of all that's put into the air in laundry exhaust should be reported when the products are sold. Tens of millions of point sources of laundry exhaust in California just can't be measured, much less reported on. But we can see the aggregate amounts when they're sold. So long as every single ingredient is reported, no lying, no lumping anything together as "fragrance".

Let's get the facts first, but we need to act. Too many people are suffering, and the problem completely escapes existing measures and models.

Thank you for listening.