The recently-established “Fragrance Free” section at Blessed Sacrament Church in Seattle enables parishioners with adverse reactions to perfumes and other fragrances and odors to enjoy the Mass.

SEATTLE—Until Blessed Sacrament Parish established a “fragrance free section” at select Masses on Sundays, Wendy Lindmark would stand by the door throughout the Mass in case she needed to duck outside for a breath of fresh air.

Now she’s able to sit through the liturgy from beginning to end, comforted in the knowledge that she’ll depart in the same shape as when she arrived.

Blessed Sacrament last August created a “Fragrance Free” seating area in the church’s south transept for the 7:30, 9 and 10:30 a.m. Sunday Masses. The special section enables parishioners such as Lindmark to attend Mass without fear of being exposed to fragrances that can make them ill.

“It surprised me a couple of weeks ago when I realized I no longer expect to get sick from going to Mass,” Lindmark said.

Her situation reflects what other Catholics who are asthmatic or suffer from Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) face each time they walk into their church for Mass: the possibility of spending days or even weeks in bed after becoming ill from fragrances that their respiratory systems cannot tolerate.

Innoucous-seeming products such as perfumes, deodorants, hair sprays, soaps, incense, candles, holy oils, dryer sheets, carpeting and flowers can affect them without warning. They are forced to leave Mass early. And in some cases, they don’t bother coming back to the church.

Joan Reid, a member of another Seattle parish, can’t remember the last time she attended Mass at her church, where she said the incense regularly triggered her asthma. “To ask me when the last time I was at Mass is like asking when was the last time I took poison,” she said.

Virginia Barber, a member of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Vancouver, used to don a carbon-filtered mask so she could last through the Sunday liturgy without suffering an asthma attack. Sunday Mass became more of a penance than a celebration, she said. She’d avoid the handshake during the sign of peace, knowing that the scent of the hand lotion would stay with her until she was able to get home and wash with her own special soap.

Even the sight of students lined up in the hallway at the parish school became a cause for concern for Barber -- the children’s clothes often carried a buildup of the scent of dryer sheets.

Today, Barber said her condition is much improved. No more respirator masks at Sunday liturgies. And she can now handle the soap in the church’s restroom to wash off the hand lotion fragrance. “But if somebody comes in (to Mass) who’s really fragrant and sits near me,” she added, “I will move to another part of the church.”

That’s why sufferers such as Barber, Reid and Lindmark are heartened to see Blessed Sacrament address the issue. It’s a simple step, they say, and one that also helps educate others in the parish.

While their numbers may be relatively small, “there’s more of us than you realize,” Barber said. “And it’s a genuine physical problem, it’s not in the person’s mind.”

At Blessed Sacrament, the decision to establish the fragrance free section was not a big issue, said office assistant Shirley Hendrix. Someone requested it and Blessed Sacrament’s parish administrator, Dominican Father Daniel Syverstad, followed through. So far, they know of five parishioners who are adversely affected by fragrances, Hendrix said.

To accommodate them, no incense is burned at the three Sunday morning Masses, although it can be used in later Masses.

The parish bulletin, in announcing the special section, urged fellow parishioners to “respect the sensitivities of those who are allergic to perfume, cologne, smoke and other odors and fragrances when they sit in this section.

“This will allow some of our parishioners the ability to join us for the Eucharist,” the bulletin said, “when they would otherwise be unable to do so.”

Lindmark said she was initially apprehensive about the new section “because it’s so hard to know what personal care products are going to affect you and which aren’t; it’s such a unique problem to each person.

“But it has worked out very well,” she said, “and I’m very appreciative.”

She added that she and others who suffer adverse reactions to fragrances want to be a part of the community – not isolated from it.

Barber said she felt like a leper for a while because people would say to her: ‘I won’t come close to you because I’m wearing a fragrance.’

But like Lindmark, she also is appreciative of her parish’s sensitivities to her condition. She said Our Lady of Lourdes is in the process of getting new carpeting for the church, and parish officials are being careful to make sure it will be low in volatile organic compounds (voc). A high voc content would force her to go to Mass at another church until the fumes had dissipated – a course of action she had to take for approximately eight weeks when the church’s interior was painted.

Sufferers say their susceptibility can force them to alter routines and even lifestyles. Lindmark won’t go to movies anymore at the risk of becoming ill from the scent of the buttered popcorn and the cleaners used on seats.

“I can only really attend events where I know I can leave if I need to leave,” she said. “Trying to stay an hour at a concert or at Mass is very difficult without being able to feel like I can go get fresh air.”

Many sufferers can’t ride the bus, Reid said. And she noted that many more women than men are adversely affected by fragrances.

Both Reid and Lindmark said an overexposure to formaldehyde during their working careers led to their respiratory problems.

Until her condition improved, Barber said her husband was their family’s designated food shopper because she couldn’t go inside supermarkets.

When Blessed Sacrament’s interior brickwork was being sandblasted as part of a renovation project following the 2001 earthquake, Lindmark stayed away from the building for a year.
She attended Masses at neighboring St. Patrick Church, where the airflow suited her well. One Sunday, however, the candle aroma was so strong for some reason that she told her husband before Mass that they’d have to leave. They drove to yet another church, but by then her lungs had already reached the “saturation” point. That and the fact it was First Communion Sunday at this second church – and some people would be heavily perfumed -- caused them to give up the effort of attending Mass that day.

Reid, the Seattle parishioner, has been active for several years in advocating for fragrance free settings in churches, hospitals and other facilities. She said exposure to heavy incense fumes at funerals and other liturgies leaves her unable to breathe. And though liturgical incense without chemical additives is available, Reid believes some churches use the chemically-enhanced incense, which is the problem.

The “resulting pollution lingers in poorly ventilated churches, incapacitating sensitive individuals and driving away worshippers,” she wrote two years ago in a letter to The Catholic Northwest Progress.

She added last week that fragrances in perfumes and other products are no longer alcohol or floral based, as they were in the past. Chemicals are used today, she said, “and the health department can’t even check on it because the companies maintain trade secrets.”
In regards to the use of incense, Carolyn Lassek, director of the archdiocesan Liturgy Office, said incense is a tradition deeply rooted in the Roman Catholic rite.

“Church writers have been fond of describing the meaning of the use of incense thus: ‘It is in particular an expression of festival joy and solemn prayer,” Lassek said in an e-mail response.

And “In the Fourth Century, we find that incense was first used in liturgical rites at the proclamation of the Gospel, as an honor to Christ the Lord, and then as an image of the fragrance of his teachings.”

Lassek noted that the Rite of Dedication of a church and/or altar calls for the bishop to place the grains of sand on burning coals and to pray: “Lord, may our prayer ascend as incense in your sight. As this building is filled with fragrance so may your Church fill the world with the fragrance of Christ.”

Incense, along with music, art, architecture and other means, is the way “God’s relationship and covenant” with us is expressed in the liturgy, Lassek said. “The use of incense is one more poetic expression on the wonder of our relationship with our God,” she said.

In Vancouver, Barber said she recognizes the integral part that incense plays in the liturgy.
“I love it,” she said. “And that’s why I told (pastor) Father John (Ludvik), ‘Don’t ever not use it because of me.

“It’s good incense, and it’s liturgical, and I love everything liturgical,” said Barber, who is a lector in her parish.

When the incense drifts too close to her, she simply places a kerchief over her mouth. “And I tend to not sit as close to the altar area,” she said, “and that works fine.”