Does this smell like blackberries to you -- or is it more like the aroma of money?

[LiberalHeart]

If you have a sensitive sniffer or lungs that can be sent into spasms when you're exposed to fragrances, you might have to step away from the newspaper. Here's what's coming and, in one case, already here:

http://newsgrinder.blogspot.com/2007/04/does-this-smell-like-blackberries-to.html

[Auggie]

1. It's corporate pollution, either way

[aquart]

2. They're going to regret that.

[Sequoia]

3. Indeed.

There have been times when I couldn't finish a book because the pages stunk.

[DCKit]

4. Are Victoria's Secret scratch and sniff ads far off?

Just asking : )

[Kutjara]

5. They won't be content until they've inundated all our senses.

Sight and hearing are already fully coopted, with hundreds, if not thousands, of advertising messages a day. Now it's smell they're after. I can't wait till our TVs and radios start belching out the smells of greasy hamburgers, dirty diapers and BO. The news media will quickly climb onboard, treating us to the smell of blood, shit and fear during their coverings of whatever war we're in by then.

Can't wait to see what they have in store for touch and taste. Oh wait...yes I can.

[DURHAM D]

6. I love Vanity Fair - a great political magazine but for many

years when I receive a new edition I start by removing all of the the ads printed on heavier paper stock and all of the pages with smelly stuff on them. I call this "getting the magazine ready for reading".

The pages that come out of the mag fill up an entire waste basket. Because of the increase in the smelly ads I actually take the magazine apart on the porch now - I don't want that stuff inside my house.

[Lasher]

8. I hate the way the heavy-paper ads make the magazine SPRING! open to the location of the ad.

I rip them all out too, with enthusiasm.

[LiberalHeart]

9. Contact them. They offer a fragrance-free subscription. Really. I had one.

[DURHAM D]

12. Really - that is great news.

Do you pay more for a fragrance-free subscription?

[LiberalHeart]

13. No, it's the same price. All you gotta do is tell them.

[DURHAM D]

14. Thanks - I will ask them.

You never know what you might learn on the DU.

[Warpy]

7. I remember a long time ago reading a very garlicky chicken

recipe in Gourmet magazine, only to find a Giorgio scratch & sniff tucked into the next page. It was an incredibly nauseating experience and I haven't read that magazine since. You didn't have to scratch those things to be under olfactory attack, they stank.

I did finally find a use for those damned things: when put into my sweater trunk, they discouraged moths.

They certainly discouraged me.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

10. Please, not more smelly stuff in print material

I'm one of many people who are sensitive to certain scents. Some go so far as to make me nauseous, but more simply give me a killer headache. This is really going to be a pain for me.

[LiberalHeart]

11. Anybody notice how Purell (I think that's the name) hand sanitizer is everywhere?

That stuff puts me into a condition where it's very hard to breathe -- and it's also painful because it makes my bronchial tubes to go into spasm. The pain can last for hours. When it first hits, I get dizzy and feel like I'm falling down into a narrow black hole. It's awful.

The company tells me they have no idea why it affects me that way. But online I found reports that said what I'm going through is a known, but rare, reaction. Supposedly the ingredients are in all manner of things like toiletries and hair care products and cosmetics.

The sanitizer can be anywhere -- I've encountered it at docs' officies, in stores, at the bureau of motor vehicles, and at the hospital it was in every patient's room and in the corridors and mounted beside the elevators.

I haven't heard many people who've experienced the same thing I do, though I do know a woman who is instantly sent into an asthma attack whenever someone near her uses Purell. The triggering odor doesn't last long, just till it floats off in the air, but the after-effects go on for a long time.