Banning body odour

While doing some research for my other blog, Stand FAST, I came across an item on the Forces International website about stinkers and smellers. Uh-huh. I said stinkers and smellers.

Apparently, the Murfreesboro (Tennessee) City Council adopted a good hygiene policy back in 2003, to the effect that: "No employee shall have an odor generally offensive to others when reporting to work. An offensive body odor may result from a lack of good hygiene, from an excessive application of a fragrant aftershave or cologne or from other causes."

That’s right folks. Up here in the Great White North, Ontario’s Liberal government passed the Smoke Free Ontario Act to control the alleged health hazards of exposure to secondhand smoke. Down in Tennessee, they’ve passed a fragrance free Murfreesboro law to protect society from the hazards of exposure to Chanel # 5, Irish Spring and Old Spice.

According to the anti-fragrance fanatics, fragrances contain neurotoxic, carcinogenic, endocrine-disrupting and other toxic chemicals. The toxic chemicals contained in fragrances can make anyone sick in large enough quantities. People with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) are especially susceptible to the dangers of this public health hazard and will virtually always get sick from even slight traces of these chemicals.

People don’t speak out about the dangers posed by inconsiderate stinkers for very good reason. Your fragrance may have already affected someone so much that she or he has trouble speaking, thinking, taking action or even remaining awake and conscious. Uh-huh. They could be knocked unconscious by a whiff of Bounce from your freshly washed shirt.

And, just what criteria will be used to identify and define offensive odours?

Well, according to City Councilman Toby Gilley, the standard would be the same one a U.S. Supreme Court justice used to identify pornography. "We'll know it when we see it," Gilley said. Or, in the case of the Murfreesboro anti-fragrance ordinance, "We'll know it when we smell it."

Now, I don’t want to make fun of people with MCS, even if the National Institute of Environmental Health Science says the very existence of such an affliction is in dispute. But, I do think that banning people who wear perfume, cologne, scented hair spray and the like from public places is going a little too far.

Besides, I don’t think it’s all that funny.

There are people out there who don’t like the smell of burning tobacco. So, they turned secondhand smoke into a health hazard and banned smoking in all public places, bars, restaurants, etc. Anti-smoker fanatics, through distorted science and suspect statistics, managed to turn smokers into social misfits.

The odour activists want to eliminate harmful smells.

I know what you’re thinking. You’ve made up your mind that this is a joke. And, you’re wrong. “So what?” You say. That kind of nonsense won’t work in Canada.

Wrong again. More in my next post.

To be continued