In the interest of equal time, reader Michelle sends a heated response to this post from the pre-iconic years.

You obviously have never had to get off a bus on your way to work and be late just so you can sit in the bus stop and use your inhalers trying to breathe because some young girl decided the bus was the best place to put on her makeup and spray herself, and half the bus, with an aresol perfume. Fragrance sensitivity is not a 'junk science'! Up until 1986 I was one of the oblivious masses coating myself in good smelling poison. Then I got very sick, couldn't keep any food down for several weeks, and slowly, over the next year or so, became 'allergic' to fragrances. Depending on the chemical makeup, they can make me weak, dizzy, and unable to stand; or, turn beet red and feel like scratching me skin off; or, worst of all, unable to breathe. Anything 'vanilla' will do all three. I am not a 'hypochondriac' or an idiot. 
 
As for just talking to the offenders instead of passing legistlation - at one of my previous jobs I told them about the fragrance problem up front before I was hired. A year later they hired a woman who bathed in it. She ended up being incompetent and they fired her. In the meantime, I had to get an ADA accomodation for a 'fragrance-free' office. The other workers hated me, sprayed perfume in my office when I was out to lunch, and went out of their way to cause me as much harm as possible. People can be extremely MEAN! If they feel you are putting your 'preference' above their 'rights' they can be down right viscious! 
 
Just thought you ought to know! Oh, and by the way - I am a Libertarian. But, the purpose of government is to protect those who can't protect themselves and to establish laws for the protection of everyone. Not for free handouts and economic meddling but for tort law - for harm done to others out of ignorance, willfulness, or cruelty. Anything that a person does that can directly harm another person falls into the proper jurisdiction of government. Smoking, using fragrances in the workplace, or on public transportation, smoking marijuana/crack/meth in a room crowded with children, driving your car with your eyes closed, you know, that sort of stuff. 
 
If I sound hostile, I apologize. It is just that over the last 10 years I have missed graduations, birthday parties, my own backyard (because of people doing laundry with highly fragranced dryer sheet 3 houses away), and so many other things that I can't even list them. I work in an office where they assured me there were several other people with fragrance sensitivities and it wouldn't be a problem. Yes, there are. And all of us are suffering in silence with headaches, frequent bronchitis, sinusitus, etc.

Maybe we should make peanut butter illegal to protect those of us with peanut allergies.