Plug In Air Fresheners

I don't believe I have ever shared our

run in with air fresheners on this blog

and why I will never, ever, ever

have one in my house again

I'm not sure what made me think of this

since it happened over a year ago

but since I did

I thought I would share

Note this really did happen to us

it's not something that happened to a friend

of a cousin who heard it from their uncle

who is twice removed (whatever that means)

This all occured on 8/5/10

I just wanted to share with everyone our eye opening story about plug in air fresheners…I’m sure some of you are already aware of this, but I was not.

Thursday night after being home for about an hour I started to feel spacey and my head felt fuzzy (yes I know even more than usual J).  The girls were starting to get a cold so I figured that I must be coming down with the same thing.  Anyway I didn’t think about it again until our dog Charlie woke us up in the middle of the night hacking.  Scott got up with him and took him out and he ended up puking.  After Scott took the dog out he noticed that there was a haze in the living room and he said he now felt spacey and fuzzy too.  I was feeling worse and my arms felt heavy (a very odd feeling).  Well our first thought was carbon monoxide so we called 911.  We got the girls up and all piled into the ambulance that showed up to wait while the firemen checked the house (the girls thought this was great and were completely fascinated by all the gadgets in the ambulance).  Well after about an hour and half of searching the house and coming up with no carbon monoxide readings one of the fireman noticed one of our plug in air fresheners was turning black.  It was that kind that has a little fan on it to blow the nice fragrant air throughout the entire house.  Well it was blowing smoke throughout the entire house.  Another of our plug ins (we had 5) was so hot the fireman couldn’t take it out of the plug without his gloves on.  Mind you we had just changed all the refills on our air fresheners too – so it’s not like they were empty and burning up.  They fireman said that Charlie probably got sick because he was home all day and was exposed to the smoke inhalation for a longer period of time (really glad we got a dog now!!).  The fireman also informed us that plug in air fresheners are some of the worst fire hazards you can have in your house and in his personal opinion they should be illegal.  So needless to say we have thrown away all 5 now.  Anyway I just wanted to share in case anyone has these in their house as we have learned the hard way how dangerous they can be!

So please please please pass this on

to all your family & friends

it's scary to think that we may

have never woke because of something

that is supposed to make our house more inviting