The Bad Air Sponge

Published: Monday, February 25, 2008
Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.

– Helen Keller

Nearly any real estate agent will tell you that one of the surest ways to appeal to a would-be buyer is to have an enticing smell — freshly baked cookies, brewing coffee, simmering soup — wafting through your home when it is being toured.

The olfactory system, which senses and processes odours, is one of the oldest parts of the brain. Among our senses, smell alone has a unique relationship with the limbic system, a key emotional centre associated with our moods, behaviour, and long-term memory.

In the book Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell, the use of fragrance in the home is described as having been a matter of “practical housekeeping” for our ancient relatives. Clothes stored in cedar chests were not only kept fragrant, but also protected from moths. Incense burned in storerooms both perfumed the wares within and helped ward off rodents.

More recently, the therapeutic use of scents — like many other traditional practices, including naturopathy, massage, and Ayurvedic medicine — is starting to receive growing attention, both from the general public and the scientific community.

Aromatic research, while still in its infancy, is already beginning to show that the smells in our homes, workplaces, and institutions such as hospitals can have a measurable effect on how comfortable we feel, and on our ability to handle stressful situations.

Today, aromatherapy is considered one of the fastest growing fields in holistic medicine. In some countries, including France, it has already been incorporated into mainstream medicine.

“People are realizing the therapeutic value of essential oils,” says Pat Antoniak, a registered nurse and registered aromatherapist who owns the Natural Comfort Wellness Centre in Tsawwassen. “People are starting to see the limitations of pharmacology, and looking to get away from petrochemicals.”

While scientific research on the cause and effect of aromatherapy is still limited, in vitro testing and a few double-blind studies have demonstrated the antibacterial and antiviral effects of some essential oils, and the abilities of others to reduce stress and anxiety.

It is important to note that not all seemingly pleasant scents are created equal. You may love the “morning dew” smell of your bathroom air freshener or the vanilla essence that wafts from your favourite candle. However, the aroma emanating from these products may be far from natural, let alone therapeutic.

Professionals recommend that people allow themselves to be guided by their natural preference. If you like an essential oil, you will enjoy using it. However, if you feel obligated to try one just because it is supposed to be good for a particular ailment, but you hate the aroma, it is likely your body’s way of telling you to choose something else.

Sharpen up your sound and your decor with these iPod speakers from Scandyna that look like so many colourful robots lined up ready to blast out your favourite tunes. According to the maker Scandyna, every aspect of the design has a precise acoustical justification so there’s more to this look than pure whimsy. The Minipod has three spheres and comes in a rainbow of colours from the standard, black, white and silver to midnight blue, racing green, yellow and others. Look for them at www.podspeakers.com.

Font:****Billed as the sub-£100 laptop, this stripped down but functional laptop is slated to launch at the Education Show in Birmingham, England at the end of this month. Elonex’s ONE is geared to school kids and runs on the Linux operating system with software giving students access to word processing, spreadsheet software, e-mail, a scientific calculator, an imaging and graphics package and Internet browsing. It has Wi-Fi built in, and the company is offering ONEunion, an online site allowing users to download content, music and artwork and personalize their ONE. Weighing in at less than one kilogram, it has a full QWERTY keyboard, a seven-inch (17.9 cm) screen, a flash-based hard drive and a battery that runs for three hours. Elonex plans to donate to underprivileged children one out of every 100 of these laptops that are sold. No word on availability in North America, but in announcing the new laptop, Elonex’s marketing manager Sam Goult said the company expects to bring low-cost computing to Europe and beyond.

BLACKBERRY PEARL 8130 SMARTPHONE IN PINK, $100 WITH A THREE-YEAR CONTRACT FROM TELUS, $500 WITH NO CONTRACT

Pick the BlackBerry Pearl 8130 in pink and Telus will donate $25 from the sale to Rethink Breast Cancer, a charity focusing on young people who are affected by and concerned about breast cancer. This version includes pink chameleon wallpaper, a two megapixel camera with flash and video and the regular phone, e-mail, web browsing, text messaging and other social and business functions of the BlackBerry.

ENELOOP AIR FRESHENER, SANYO

If you’ve ever shared a car with a dog who has taken a dip in the ocean, you’ll appreciate this compact air freshener from Sanyo that uses the company’s electrolyzed water technology to clean the air with a “virus washer” function. It has a rechargeable battery and also can be plugged into a cigarette lighter or a regular outlet to rid the air around you of pesky odours from your pet or a smelly smoker, viruses, airborne bacteria or allergens such as pollens. It’s launching in Japan.

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The UC Irvine Health Education Center and the Student Taskforce Advocating Reducing Tobacco (START) hosted Smoke-Free Kiss, an event aimed both at helping smokers quit their addiction and preventing non-smokers from picking up the habit. Booths for the event were set up on Ring Mall in front of Humanities Hall on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14 and activities for the event lasted from noon to 3 p.m.

Activities featured a round of questions posed by START volunteers to passers-by and a free drawing with a prize of a bouquet of flowers and a $25 gift certificate to Islands Restaurant.

According to Jasmine Blackburn, the manager of Student Development and Tobacco at the Health Education Center, presenting smoking awareness through such carefree activities is more welcoming to students than showing them a photograph of a cancerous lung.

“I think [the activities are] more effective. … You get a lot of the scare tactics when you’re in grade school [and] high school,” Blackburn said.

Smoking policy at UCI was a key topic addressed by volunteers at the event. According to a 2005 student survey conducted by the Health Education Center, 94 percent of 302 students opted for some form of tobacco-related policy change on campus. According to Blackburn, START is currently working toward making the courtyard of the Student Center smoke-free.

Alice Wang, a first-year public health policy major who also volunteered at the event, compiled a list of questions to ask students in the hopes of informing them of the effects of tobacco. Such questions targeted the effects that tobacco has on pregnant women and the number of students smoking on college campuses.

According to Wang, the Smoke-Free Kiss Event was helpful because of its ability to inform smokers in a non-hostile way.

“I think it’s good that they’re relating it to love and kisses instead of condemning people for smoking,” Wang said.

During the event, two information packets were handed out to those who passed the Smoke-Free Kiss booths.

The first packet functioned as a quit kit for smokers and included a pamphlet titled “Becoming a Former Smoker.” The pamphlet included a list of how smokers could begin to quit their addiction, such as identifying the costs and benefits of being smoke-free as well as setting a start date to stop smoking.

The packet also included different objects intended to satisfy some of the cravings that smokers may get, such as a packet of Extra spearmint gum, a rubber band and an air freshener.

The gum is intended to address oral cravings, which would otherwise be satisfied by puffing on a cigarette; the rubber band gives smokers something to fiddle with in their hands; the air freshener replaces the smell of burning nicotine with a minty scent.

The second packet contained fewer items, bearing such gifts as stress balls so that students, who begin smoking because they are stressed out, can find other ways to relieve stress. The packet for non-smokers also came with a pink piece of paper containing the message “From this care package you are affirming the recipient’s decision to stay smoke-free or encouraging the recipient’s decision to quit smoking.”

Blackburn also suggested two services provided by the Health Education Center Smokers to smokers interested in quitting. The first service is a one-on-one series of meetings in which smokers meet with Health Education Center representatives and are able to talk about their smoking habits in a private atmosphere.

The scheduling of the sessions is particularly flexible since there are no restrictions on when they take place and smokers can plan to quit smoking without rearranging their schedules. The second service is for those who may not be ready to enter a one-on-one session. This program allows smokers to attend quit-smoking classes with other smokers. Classes are held on the first and third Wednesday of every month in the Health Education Center.

According to Blackburn, this is the third year that Smoke-Free Kiss was held on campus and volunteers at the event were able to distribute 180 packets. This year also marks a change in how the event was presented with less emphasis on activities and more attention was given to spreading facts about smoking. While this decision had some consequences, the change in policy also allowed more information to be distributed.

“We didn’t sell as many [raffling] tickets … but it was more informative,” Blackburn said.

THE jury in the trial of four people accused in connection with the murder of an elderly woman, dumping her body near Thame and then setting fire to it, today heard from the two friends of hers who first alerted the police to her disappearance. They heard too, how the woman accused of murdering 94 year-old, Mrs Thea Zaudy, told two of her alleged accomplices that a suitcase they carried around the London tube contained wet blankets.

Oxford Crown Court also heard Queen’s Council for the Prosecution describe how evidence would show that Jolanta Kalinowsica, her son, Adrian Lis and his girlfriend, Monilca Sienkievicv, used Mrs Zaudy’s Debit card to spend around £4,000 in an hour on electrical goods, paid for diesel fuel for the car alleged to have been used to transport the body to Thame, and bought a ring can of petrol also using the card which they are alleged to have used to set fire to Mrs Zaudy’s body.

Kalinowsica, the Prosecution alleged, denies the charges against her, and has said that she had permission from Mrs Zaudy to use her Debit card, in repayment for a loan she, Kalinowsica had made to Mrs Zaudy for card-playing debts.
Three friends of Mrs Zaudy’s all attested that as far as they knew, she only played bridge “for pennies” and was not short of money.

Other evidence heard in court to day revolved around how tidy or otherwise Mrs Zaudy was (two friends who went into the flat after she had disappeared, both remarked on how unusually tidy it was how it smelled strongly of air-freshener), and whether Mrs Zaudy was able to walk around without her walking stick (it was seen still in the flat by the two concerned friends who went in there when they had not heard from her for several days).

Council for the Defence in questioning Mrs Zaudy’s friends tried to infer that in view of her age and that she wore incontinence pads, she and her flat would have smelled of urine so necessitating the use of air freshener. Both witnesses denied that to be the case, saying she was always neat and tidy and was never unpleasant to be close to.

The court heard a recording of a personal alarm message received from Mrs Zaudy’s home, on the day she was supposed to have been murdered (July 11, 2007), where a voice can be heard to say something about cleaning - a message which was dismissed as a false alarm by the system’s monitoring centre.

The case will continue tomorrow when the court will hear and see evidence of mobile phone tracking, CCTV, Oyster card usage and other DVD evidence which helped to track the movements of the three defendants. The fourth defendant, Lukasz Gajda, was alleged to have picked up the other three with Mrs Zaudy’s body in a canvas suitcase, in his car and driven them all to Milton Common, Near Thame.

For many area residents, the daily commute is such an accepted routine that the question is less “Do you have one?” than “How long is it?” Some extreme commuters even bypass complaining about their two-hour drives and brag instead about unrecognizable Zip codes and double-digit acreage.

But even regular old stuck-on-the-highway commuters can use a little help with cool car stuff for their homes away from home.

To keep the road rage at bay, start off with the right ambiance, the sweet smell of a fresh-brewed cuppa joe from an Accoutrements air freshener. Hang it from your rearview mirror and keep on truckin’.

If the family ride is also a movable office, throw your laptop and files into Go Office’s Auto Exec Mobile Desk. Just strap a seat belt around it and roll out. For the iPod and BlackBerry, there’s Organize.com’s Cell Phone Cup. It fits handily into a console cup holder.

Since everyone knows stoplights are really timed grooming opportunities, why not stash your makeup in Secco’s stylish “On the Road” model, made from recycled car tire rubber? If there’s time, plug RoadPro’s 12-volt curling iron into the lighter socket for a quick defuzz before the 9 a.m. meeting. (We are not encouraging all you car-bound flossers, tooth brushers and nose inspectors. We can see you, so just stop.)

And for those who want a better view, Brookstone’s got your sentimental streak covered with its three-inch digital picture frame for a slideshow of family photos that can be mounted on the dashboard. It’ll be a reminder of what’s waiting for the tired road warrior back at home.

– Jill Hudson Neal