"Toxic" Scented Candles

There are definitely a couple of harmful toxins on that list (I'd be wary of all the ones with *chloro* in the name for starters), although news to me they'd be produced by burning candles. 2-butanone sounds like a scent to me (swag).

I can vouch for the allergenic effects of scented candles, plugins etc. Also that the scent from them lingers for a long time and is hard to get rid of ..(think cleaning up after a rental). The candles leave a veneer of smelly soot over walls, ceilings etc which is as bad as cigarette smoke (or nearly). Everything has to be washed, and woe betide there is some drop of hardened wax hidden anywhere, to continue to smell.

The same goes for those plug-ins as well. Dump them all. I find them to be universally obnoxious to the olfactory system, never mind those who suffer with allergies. Covering up bad smells with chemicals just seems to be the wrong approach.

Yes,... instead of masking the odors with more odors,... open a window...

I think it comes down to what type of candles (ie; what additives), how many you are burning, and if the space is ventilated...I think used in moderation there is no threat to health, unless you have a scented candle that gives off fumes you may be allergic to, certainly no reason to avoid candles if you find them enjoyable for whatever reason....I wouldn't have them in a house with kids, or hyperactive pets, or other potential circumstances where a candle may be subject to being toppled, or close to any flammable materials etc...I don't see any reason for them myself, except in an emergency situation possibly....

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/21/candles.air.pollution/

Probably toxic in California...

not when you go commando.

In 2018, we live in tightly sealed indoor environments for half the year (maybe not in Britain, but anywhere in North America where there's a winter!). Indoor air pollution is a legitimate issue because of how sealed our houses are now.

Also beg to differ that chemicals in the list are all combustible. Carbon tetrachloride certainly is not. It has a "sweet" smell and may explain in part why those scents linger and are hard to get rid of. And toxic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tetrachloride

"Carbon tetrachloride is one of the most potent hepatotoxins (toxic to the liver), so much so that it is widely used in scientific research to evaluate hepatoprotective agents.^[7][14] Exposure to high concentrations of carbon tetrachloride (including vapor) can affect the central nervous system, degenerate the liver^[14] and kidneys,^[15] and prolonged exposure may lead to coma or death.^[16] Chronic exposure to carbon tetrachloride can cause liver^[17][18] and kidney damage and could result in cancer.^{[19] "}

^{You may thank your wife for getting rid of them, later.}

I meant Hannes' wife.

The candles that were burned of yore didn't contain any of the *chloro* chemicals on the list. And there's stuff on the list that isn't considered hazardous at all, it's a mixed bag of 'sweet' scented chems. As for dose, the high dose effects are termed "acute", low dose repeat exposure "chronic".

Trichlorofluoromethane = freon-11, CFC-ll . Ozone depleting but won't kill you unless you inhale a lot.

Trichloroethane aka methyl chloroform " Although not as toxic as many similar compounds, inhaled or ingested 1,1,1-trichloroethane does act as a central nervous system depressant and can cause effects similar to those of ethanol intoxication, including dizziness, confusion, and, in sufficiently high concentrations, unconsciousness and death.[7].... chronic exposure has been linked to abnormalities in the liver, kidneys, and heart. Pregnant women should avoid exposure, as the compound has been linked to birth defects in laboratory animals..."

"The chemical compound trichloroethylene is a halocarbon commonly used as an industrial solvent. It is a clear non-flammable liquid with a sweet smell. The IUPAC name is trichloroethene.... Due to concerns about its toxicity, the use of trichloroethylene in the food and pharmaceutical industries has been banned in much of the world since the 1970s. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichloroethylene

A long and detailed history, controversy, groundwater contaminant, etc. The established ill effects are from occupational exposures - as you pointed out, dosage. IMO there's enough evidence of health risks, kidney cancer, liver cancer, heart defects in offspring etc. that I wouldn't personally welcome gratuitous exposure for the sake of a sickly sweet smell... ymmv.

We all die of something eventually. May want to google "is liver cancer a pleasant death".

1. Please explain why anyone would put <...*chloro* chemicals on the list...> into something that has been made, until <...of yore...> had passed, without them?
2. <...isn't considered hazardous...> by whom?

Avid readers want to know.

Huh??

(1) Petrochemical industries worked avidly to create inexpensive substitutes for natural goods. Their wax smells nasty, compared to beeswax etc "of yore". But other chems smell "sweet" and can be added as artificial scents; other reasons eg CCl4 is used in 'lava lamps' to tweak other properties of the wax etc etc. I presume there is an explanation for each, in a process of "product development", driven by the desire for streams of cash from what is cheap, novel, marketable, and so on.

(2) 2-Butanone. Considered a food grade flavoring/scent, as marketed by Sigma Aldritch, so at least, presumably, by them.

Another interesting thing abouy trichloroethane: it is known to decompose i to chemicals far more menacing at elevated temperature.

When enhaled through a cigarette (or maybe past a candle) TCE can decompose into the likes of phosgene and trichloroacetylene. Neither one of those is a good time.

"The candles that were burned of yore didn't contain any of the *chloro* chemicals on the list"

And our life expectancy has something like doubled over the last couple of hundred years so what usen't to matter, now does -

'how sealed our houses are now.'

What your houses have no exchange of fresh air from outside?

Most houses around here are insulated and wrapped with Tyvek™ or similar (Plastic), so when all doors and windows are closed, there is essentially no exchange of fresh air from outside other than vents for furnaces and water heaters. Since the burning of solid fuels is usually restricted or prohibited in densely populated areas, many homes have no fireplaces, have electric (fake) fireplaces with no or fake chimneys, or have sealed off the real chimney to avoid the loss of heat.

When I first moved to this house almost 50 years ago, there was no insulation in the walls, so in the winter, cold air filtered in through every switch and electrical outlet. After we had the house insulated, at first it seemed stuffy, but we quickly became accustomed to the new lower oxygen levels etc.

Fortunately for me, I chose to live in a region of low population density at a high enough altitude that there are (so far) no restrictions on fireplace use, and indeed I lit a nice fire just now, before sitting down at my computer. A significant fraction of my home heat is provided by burning firewood, mostly oak. Gathering and splitting firewood from my property and from the edges of the bordering forest is my principal form of exercise, and helps to reduce the fire danger. There is a vent to allow outside combustion air into the insert in my fireplace, and we do keep one window open a little in an unoccupied room. Many people don't!

back in the 70's houses were built for insulation because of the 'energy crisis' with little thought into ventilation or understanding for that matter, a number of issues had arose because of this, especially in prefabbed homes in northern states where 'scented candles' would be the least of the problems..

Fortunately,.. they improved on monitors now.

because people rarely lived past ,... 35?.... centuries ago.

Hello Phoenix,

A little light on the stats...

On average you are correct but averages do not prepresent reality very well.

Hundreds of years ago, many people did make it to 50 or 60. The problem was that a large number of people died very young (0 to 5 years old). Many times more than today. This squewed the average down.

Of course, very few people made it past 70 then and now it is expected for the majority in developped countries.

Enjoy those years!

"... On average you are correct but averages do not prepresent reality very well..."

.

That is well illustrated by the average adult human having about one breast and about one testicle.

Or and average family with 1.5 children ....

Asthma sufferers say these help remove toxins from the air.

Himalayan Salt Lamp Bowl with Dimmer Switch

Some self professed sufferers say these help to reduce their suffering, too.

Self professed sufferers?

Your crudeness knows no bounds!

Please forgive my trespass. I thought you were relating self-reported anecdotal tales of support for the mystic idolotry you are pedalling.

I had no idea the improvements to said ailments were observed by third party professionals in doubly blind studies, then, I guess reported back to the patients so that they could relate their claims of efficacy.

Himalayan salts indeed. You should be ashamed.

Hmm ... my local Ollie's has these up by the cash registers. I didn't know that they cleared the air ... might be worth a try, wouldn't cost much.

You still don't know that they 'clear the air'.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to get in the way of anyone who decides they want something like the Himalayan bath salt roaster for themselves. Have at it.

It's just that dialogue here looks like a marketer's wet dream of testamonials portraying community support for the efficacy and for the purchase....and on an engineering blog, no less. Where is the skepticism, the rigour?

Exactly how do you think roasting some purported Himalayan salts would clean the air? At best, it would do nothing. At somewhere below best it adds the very chemicals mentioned above into the air you breathe.

Attributed Himalayan salt lamp health benefits. Natural living proponents and other fans of Himalayan pink salt lamps (HPSlamps) claim that the negative salt ions released by heating can boost blood flow, improve sleep, increase levels of serotonin in the brain, and calm allergy or asthma symptoms.

11 Himalayan Pink Rock Salt Lamp Health Benefits - Critical Cactus

At the very least, they are pleasing to look at and the emit a soft glow. They use a very low power light bulb, 14 W I think, and are warm to the touch.

Mind the source of your information.

Do Himalayan Salt lamps provide negative ions? Nah.

Are they safe to have in a place accessable to small children or pets that might ingest some given the alluring salty taste? No. Not unless you feel like 100 ppb lead might slow them down enough to make them more managable.

Salt played an important part during that time of the Roman Empire,

'Salary comes from the Latin word salarium, which also means "salary" and has the root sal, or "salt." In ancient Rome, it specifically meant the amount of money allotted to a Roman soldier to buy salt, which was an expensive but essential commodity.'

Some people actually inhale the smoke of cigarettes and cigars!

Then, there's vaping!

Lets not forget the saving grace of cigarettes in this discussion... they smell terrible and don't disguise it. As for cigars, there may even be cigar scented candles out there for all I know...

The lead comes from lead in wicks. This kind of wick was banned in the US in 2003.

Unscented beeswax or vegetable wax (like soy) candles with cotton or hemp wicks should be safe -- and when you lose power it's always helpful to have a candle or two or three around. Hannes and I both have recent experience with that situation .

I wondered why various home blogger-types are down on scented candles. What does the research say? I'm not finding a whole lot of research (but then I really should be researching something else like IoT safety). Science Direct offered me articles specifically about candles and some related research about fragrances in consumer products (cleaning agents, cosmetics and so forth). I'd particularly like to read this 2017 study on the neurotoxicity of fragrance compounds. But what I've seen thus far doesn't rise to the level where I'm going to toss my (soy wax cotton wick) fragranced candles. I have a feeling that people sort of mash together the evidence from different kinds of research to come up with a conclusion.

The EPA produced a report in 2001 that found concentrations of some chemicals exceeded EPA guidelines, but the guidelines were not developed for indoor air. This separate 2001 research concluded that both soot and benzene emissions were within acceptable levels.

Some research at South Carolina State University back in 2009 indicated that paraffin-based scented candles are dangerous. The National Candle Association claimed that the research was flawed.

This 2014 paper looks interesting (it compares exposure rates of various candle combustion chemicals) but I can't get to the full paper without spending money.

The abstract to this 2012 paper indicates that the type and quantity of chemicals released varies greatly depending on a candle's composition. This is a 2014 follow-up by the same research team.

Then there's this 2015 study that found excessive levels of some chemicals but, like the 2012 paper, pointed out that they varied widely based on candle composition.

This one says yes, candles increase the amount of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in a room.

I just like the title of this one: Combustion particles emitted during church services: Implications for human respiratory health.

I know how misguided a lot of these supposed expert bloggers are -- like FoodBabe.

One of the blogs I read said that a University of Michigan study found that 30% of wicks still contain lead despite the 2003 ban. Who knows.

I think I'll just burn them occasionally and not worry about it. Only when Mrs. Hannes is out, of course.

For some allergy sufferers, exposure to anything scented can be just as toxic as noxious chemicals in a candle. Also the soot and particulates. Several of the sources I read made this point. And some of the chemicals are worse than others -- definitely worth avoiding them if you know what they are and which scents have them.

Although I'm keeping my candles I'm making one change to my candle use. When I work in my home office I always burn a candle with a productivity-enhancing scent. Rather than letting it burn the whole time I'm in the room I'll extinguish it after an hour or so ... and maybe move it off my desk.

Ah, but we'll know more in the next couple of years! Aarhus University in Denmark has a postdoc position in "Chemical and physical characterization of gas and particle emissions from candles." It started March 1.

It would be foolish to give up your emergency candles, especially beeswax or other high quality product, strictly on the basis of PAH's IMO. I'm not giving up barbecue either.

I mean, where would we be if we hadn't discovered fire?

Toxic smoke?

No thanks...
Del

I did not read anywhere any one questioning the fact "she read somewhere"-no disrespect intended. As with anything you read, bear in mind the source. If the information came from a well established, reliable source that is one thing (and remember that even those are not always correct). As every one is aware, not everything you read is necessarily true.

I am not a chemist and cannot really say about the toxicity of the ingredients you list, but, might be interesting to find out which of them occur in the natural environment and at what levels/concentrations as those "emitted" by the candles and what are the so called "acceptable" levels.

No disrespect intended, but can you site your sources for this idea that you shouldn't believe everything you read?

j/k.

I think a major point of the original post was that some uncertainty existed because of the 'read somewhere' detail, making this, in part, a request for more information on the subject.

My "sources" are just me. I tend to be devil's advocate, as it were, on a lot of subjects, always trying to see other possibilities. Without stating any specific examples, I am sure that you as well as most other people have read items later found to be false and/or totally misleading.

The original post does indeed raise questions which are valid ones. I learned a few things going through the entire thread. Hopefully you got some more details that you were asking for as well.

Remember, never stop learning.

Tisk, tisk.

You admonish other members to provide citations and then expound, as if an expert, here #9, and here #23, and here #32 , and here again#34, without so much as a single piece of backup information.

Wow. You really do have a difficult time detecting sacasm, don't you?

I mean, requesting sources to support the idea that one shouldn't believe just anything they read? Come on, even you should be able to understand that isn't serious...

I'm glad you raised the point about linking to supporting documentation. Most of what I have written is not specialized knowledge, but whatever portion has you befuddled, let me know and Ill help you out. As it stands your request is far too broad, please narrow it down to the specific parts you don't get.

You did notice the tongue in cheek emoticon,' ' right? If you missed that, you might have noticed the' j/k' which stands for 'just kidding'.

I added those just so people like you would not miss the sarcastic tone.

What's that old saying? Something like "You can lead whores to water, but you can't make them think".

Something like that.

Prepare for a flogging...

????

It took me a few seconds to figure out what was wrong: site≠cite.

You are right.

I am duly shamed.

See my post above with references to some of the scholarly literature. Not a lot out there specific to candles. The Danish government is sponsoring research on candle toxicity, a project that kicked off this month.

I did read a couple of reports about burning incense. That seemed a lot worse than burning candles!

True. Some decades ago I set up a small group 'SSERR.org' (Society for Socially and Environmentally Responsible Religion') where I was then living, to try to reduce the pollution from incense, candles, and 'ghost money'.

Used to go to a friends place - his wife loved to burn incense - within an hour I would have a headache, within 3 my brain could contain only 1 thought - 'I gotta get out of here!' with it now raging. Friend said obviously my problem, as his children never got these headaches - I said yes, but they have been exposed to incense since they were in here - pointing to his wifes belly. Funny thing, that incense is made from the wood from which my family name is derived.

Ghost money is burnt to send money to your ancestors to help them with expenses in the afterlife. One neighbour would burn it in a 44 gal drum, and a smaller drum about 1/2 the size, for 3 hours at a time, about weekly. Amount burnt (spent) is supposedly a function of the burners feelings of guilt toward (dead) burnee.

Needless to say, lots of soot and ash - esp when all (most of) the neighbours do it, certain times of the year. Banged on one door one day shouting 'your house is on fire!' - door opens and flames nearly to my eyeballs from the ghost money drum just inside the door - father asks the kids (not in English) 'does anybody know what the crazy foreigner wants?' - frequent house fires from this practice.

Right on. Mrs. Hannes tends to be a little chemophobic and reactionary to the latest Facebook post going around, especially when it deals with household safety. I figured I'd do my own poking around since I sometimes enjoy scented candles. Especially after cooking fish or other smelly food.

I agree with the "keep learning" sentiment but I think there's a point where too much info is harmful to one's well-being and life in general, so just doing something is preferable to knowing exactly how it's affecting me. As my father-in-law often says: You're going to be killed by something, so try not to worry about it.

Now I wonder if the Fresh Pet candles I used during the puppy onslaught will cut our life expectancy. Nothing quite so ripe as a house shut up in the winter with six little poopies running around.

"...cut our life expectancy..."

The joy of having puppies around probably offsets tge detrimental effects. Still, probably best for you and the puppies to eschew attempts to chemically mask smells.

We developed sense of smell for good reasons.

Yes, take everything with a grain of salt, as it were, that is until "they" say that salt is another carcinogen, whomever "they" may be.

You were right to question that, according to what I read.

The *chloro* items on the list are categorized as common "VOC"s. They are not "natural environment" but widespread background levels do exist at least in USA for most of them, some retained in humans others floating about in the environment either as gas or in aqueous form contaminating ground water. That is besides industry/work related exposures. Carbon tetrachloride is likely the worst of the lot, and it is not emitted by candles as far as I could tell from any record of an actual test. It is present as background in the US environment and probably elsewhere, but is barely used in industry any more for the last ?? maybe 50 years.

All of the references to that list of VOC's ostensibly from scented candles are blogs referring back to a statement by the American Lung Association in 2005, I was unable to find the original statement nor reference to any research backing it up in the first place.

OTOH truthisnotacompromise is correct that research found phthalates emitted by scented candles plugins etc. Aldehydes, formaldehyde and some other things are legitimate concerns also associated with cleansers and air fresheners, not just scented candles.

It's been a long time since high school chemistry for me, so thanx for the info.

Interesting that you mention blogs cause,,,, as we all know - "everything written in a blog is absolutely accurate" - correct¿¿¡¡☻(tongue in cheek).

SO correct. Nothing more dubious than a google that returns nothing but blogs

In the latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, someone has managed to leave the word "gullible" out of the listings. <sigh>

Gullible's travails?

Toxic relationships aside.. I've seen salt lamps harboring Dust bunnies. Probably collected via convection. So they can clean the air on a small scale.

Candles? I'm not burning enough of them to care, or am i? The subject has been bandied about.

How can you have a good bath with a digital candle and a fake beer/wine.?

Everything in moderation holds true

House cleaning is not suggested as a benefit of salt lamps.

No open flames here. Except in the fire pit in the back yard.

The 12 YO is a closet pyro.

Don't get everyone else going off on open fires now.☻ They are another potential thread.

Not, "open fires", I said, no open "flames" here. As in candle flames.

Small distinction I know.

Before I retired, I had a candle in my office because I ate at my desk. After lunch I'd light it for an hour or so.

Didn't that facility have electric light, then?

The number of lamps required to clean the home would be problematic anyhow.

I would never say I'm a pyromaniac.. My love for fire is perfectly normal.

Pyrophile, perhaps?

Somehow, scented candles and a cast iron bath are just destined to be together...

My favorite scented candles are birthday candles, when I enjoy their aroma it means a present is coming my way.