December 17 , 2004

Houston Chronicle

Air-care products are best defense against offensive odors

By Deboray Mann Lake

From the diaper pail to the dog's favorite spot on the sofa to the cat box room, horrible smells assault the senses on a daily basis.

So we spray and wipe them away. We plug in something that will wipe them out. And now, we can even "play" smells that are more appealing.

Air-care products is the industry name for those things we turn to, sometimes just before company shows up, to mask or eliminate the less attractive smells of life.

The battle for our dollars has been ratcheted up a notch with Febreze's new Scentstories.

The Scentstories machine rotates scented discs that evoke pleasant associations. Since our brains adapt to a particular scent -- meaning that after about 30 minutes we don't really smell it anymore -- the Scentstories player (look at Randalls, Target, HEB, CVS Pharmacy and Kroger stores) rotates through five different but related smells so that we can continue to enjoy them.

Shades of Vanilla, for example, consists of five baking-related scents. The Holiday disc has smells of cranberry cider, baking pies, a mulberry candle, a gingerbread house and cookies warm from the oven. Yum.

"People are realizing that scents can be used in evocative ways," said Dr. Rachel Herz, scent expert and visiting professor in the psychology department at Brown University. "Smells connect us to moods and feelings. We're creating an ambience and it's an emotional ambience."

Other companies are also concocting new scents for the home. Jo Malone offers grapefruit/rosemary or basil/ verbena "colognes" for the home. It's sold at Neiman Marcus. The Malie Kaua'i collection from Hawaii uses scented waters and includes the exotic scent Pikake in everything from room sprays to soy candles to bar soap, www.maliekauai.com.

Kitchen Re-Fresh comes in kitchen-friendly fragrances such as "fresh-squeezed orange," "spring breeze" and "crisp green apple" to get rid of obnoxious odors like fish. The same company has the line Odor Assassin that claims it can even "beat skunk smell."(It's available at www.JAY-Mfg.com)

We don't know exactly what "Paris rain" or "Italian citrus" smells like, but those scents are bottled as laundry fragrances from The Good Home Co., which also offers a "cilantro" automatic dishwashing powder. Look for them at Nordstrom, Bath and Body Works or Restoration Hardware.

Crabtree & Evelyn traveled all the way to the rainforest to develop Sarawak, "an alluring blend of rare orchids balanced by hints of wild ginger delicately softened with sheer notes of bamboo and rice flower" according to the company Web site, www.crabtree-evelyn.com .

The Thymes, meanwhile, offers home fragrance mists including "ginger milk" and "olive leaf" (www.thymes.com).

Xela Aromasticks are one of the newest ways to place scent into the air and include such flavors as "soothing nursery" and "uplifting floral" that is supposed to calm your mind and lift your spirits (www.xelaarromasticks.com).

In some cases, such as Febreze's Air Effects, ingredients eliminate odors and replace them with things that smell good: "blossoms and breeze," "meadows and rain," "spring and renewal," "summer and splash" and "citrus and light."

In other cases, just getting rid of the obnoxious smell is enough. Petrotech's Odor Eliminator (at PetsMart) was specifically designed for odors such as those that rise up from the cat litter box. We found it successful against the unpleasant side of our three cats.

Hamilton Beach has joined the battle with the TrueAir Compact Odor Eliminator, a plug-in that claims to pulls in the odor with a tiny fan and then neutralizes it with a carbon filter.

And finally, Glade, long a standard for making the home smell better, has plug-ins with little fans that blow the scents more effectively into the air. The Glade Wisp Home Fragrancer automatically releases a measured puff of fragrance every few seconds.

Happy breathing.

deborah.lake@chron.com

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