Forced isolation by invisible barriers: international survey on the effects of fragrances on the quality of life
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Previous cross-sectional surveys showed that between 20 to 35% of the adult population report health effects in contact with fragrances. The present international survey with 3152 self-reported fragrance sensitive persons addresses the situation in more detail, gathered reported symptoms, underlying diseases, strategies to cope with fragrance sensitivity, and the impact on participation in social life and on quality of life. Results On average, every fragrance sensitive person in this survey associates almost ten health symptoms with fragrance exposure, the most frequent ones being cognitive problems, migraine/headaches, mucous membrane problems and breathing problems. More than a third (37.47%) of the survey participants indicate that they have experienced a physical breakdown due to heavy exposure to fragrances. Almost half of the respondents (48.92%) report that their fragrance sensitivity was the reason why they lost their job. Nearly 70% (68,31%) of survey participants indicate that they are excluded from social life almost completely or very strongly, and nearly two thirds (62.53%) indicate that they are forced into increasing isolation almost completely or very strongly. Around three quarters (76.84%) of survey participants state that fragrance exposure affects their quality of life strongly or takes away any quality of life completely. Conclusions Fragrance exposure is an invisible barrier that leads to isolation of fragrance sensitive persons in society. General avoidance of fragrances does not heal their sensitivity, but prevents the manifestation of the symptoms, so that fragrance sensitive persons would be able to participate in and contribute to society. Fragrance-free regulations for important areas, such as those implemented partially in Canada and the USA, would be an important improvement. Many fragrance substances are hazardous with effects for the human health and the environment, but they are not essential for human health, safety or for the functioning of society. Therefore, hazardous fragrances are obvious candidates for a prompt phase out according to the European essential use concept. A responsible use of fragrances would not only help fragrance vulnerable individuals, but also the general population and the environment.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".