When I was young, I struggled knowing how much cologne was, well, enough.
Just finishing up a workout, and you
raise your arms to pick up your bag when-
Eugh, is that me?
You pull out your deodorant from your bag, level it
against your stinky pits, but wait, how much is too much?
It’s not that big of a deal, right?
I mean, it’s not like anyone’s ever died from too much deodorant, right?
When Louise Capewell found her son Jonathan unconscious on
the floor of his bedroom, she didn’t know what to think.
Let alone when she learned that he’d suffered a heart attack.
But what could have triggered this deeply tragic development?
How did a young man go from spray, to prey?
Let’s get into it.
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While Axe Body Spray didn’t arrive on US store shelves
until 2002, it appeared in European pharmacies since 1983.
When the sharp smell of the spray hit UK
shelves, it did so under the name Lynx.
The world of aerosol sprays wasn’t new, cans of
hairspray littered the backpacks of stylish teens and
hairdressers for 40 years, but this was something new.
Axe and Lynx alone have a global retail value of about 1.4 billion dollars.
In the UK alone, the brand had about 8 million users as of 2020.
So needless to say, there’s something about
that sweet spray we just can’t get enough of.
Then, one day in 1998, 16 year old boy, Jonathan Capewell
was found dead from a heart attack in his home in Oldham,
a borough just east of Manchester in the United Kingdom.
According to his family, he was obsessed with smelling fresh and had
a routine of spraying his entire body with deodorant twice a day.
Jonathan’s father said that “When we told him he was
using too much, he said he just wanted to smell good”.
It got to the point that even when the rest of the family were
downstairs “we couldn't just smell it, we could taste it”.
Investigating afterwards, Jonathan’s parents found
cans of Lynx, Right Guard, and Gillette in his bedroom.
Sue Rogers of the British Aerosol Manufacturing Association,
said that “It is extraordinarily unusual and terribly tragic.
The aerosols have warnings about spraying in confined
areas and well-ventilated places but these are for
flammability risks, not about accidental inhalation.”
Barrie Williams, the local coroner,
recorded Jonathan’s death as accidental.
The post-mortem noted that he had 0.37mg of butane and the same amount of
propane per litre in his blood, when just 0.1mg per litre can be fatal.
Jonathan’s death was believed to be the
first by accidental inhalation in the UK.
Williams, the coroner, noted that there wasn’t any reason to think he
was ab—ing aerosols, but instead the case was “a high use of deodorant.
His personal hygiene led him to use more than was
normal in a confined space which limits ventilation.”
In terms of intentional inhalation of aerosols, about 220 deaths
have been attributed to inhalant a—e between 2015 to 2020.
But what about aerosols, specifically spray on deodorant, is so dangerous?
Firstly, we should talk about what actually is in spray deodorant.
Jonathan’s parents found cans of Lynx—the UK
brand name for Axe, Right Guard, and Gillette.
So while ingredients may change from product to product,
and year by year, it still serves us to know what’s in them.
Lynx Spray, according to their website, contains butane and propane.
Gillette Invisible spray contains butane.
Right Guard spray contains butane and propane.
So Jonathan Capewell was found with high concentrations of
propane and butane, and if we look at these ingredients, we
see that those same two substances are common among all three.
But what are they doing in deodorant sprays anyway?
You may be familiar with propane already.
It’s primarily used for heating and cooking, aka, it’s a flammable gas.
If you’ve ever been to a neighborhood barbecue party, or gone
camping, then you might recognize the tanks that store the gas.
But what about butane?
The number one use of butane is as a flammable fuel.
The most common places you’d see this gas in action
is in those little cigarette lighters they sell at
gas stations and in small tanks for camping stoves.
If you’ve seen the hairspray lighter trick, then it’s not
unsurprising that spray deodorant could also contain flammable fuels.
But why even use flammable gasses in deodorant?
Couldn’t spray deodorants use compressed air?
You know the stuff that comes in cans that you use to clean
out your keyboards, or dust off old corners of your office?
In canned air, carbon dioxide is pressurized in a liquid form,
with the evaporated CO2 gas sitting at the top ready for use.
This is why, using a can of compressed air upside down shoots out
cold liquid, because the CO2 is mostly liquid, save for the top.
As you use compressed air, it cools rapidly, which
slows down evaporation, therefore reducing the pressure.
A process called adiabatic cooling.
Butane and propane however, have a much higher vapor pressure
than plain old CO2, so they’re much more efficient over time.
As you use your spray, the vapour propels the
contents out, reducing pressure inside the can, and
the liquid evaporates, repressurizing the space.
So that’s why flammable gases are used for propellants,
but that still doesn’t tell us how spray deodorant could
trigger heart problems like Jonathan’s heart attack.
Maybe another case will help us understand?
The story of Thomas Townsend, a 16 year old from Kent
who passed away in 2016, is similar to Jonathan’s.
Thomas’s mother, Sally, said that her son would replace showers
with spray deodorant, and he would go through a can per week.
When authorities searched his room, they found 42 assorted cans of spray.
The Environmental Working Group, an organization that
researches harmful chemicals, has rated many common
body sprays and deodorants as potentially harmful.
Axe and Old Spice, they say, are moderate to high health hazards.
The coroner who examined Thomas post-mortem found that he died due to
a “collapse of the circulatory system due to butane gas inhalation.”
So clearly there’s some connection between the inhalation of butane
and propane and heart problems, but what could it possibly be?
Well, high concentrations of any particular gas is pretty much always bad.
Even breathing air with too high a concentration
of oxygen can be dangerous for you, even kill you.
Normal air contains about 21% oxygen,
78% nitrogen, and 1% other random gas.
Jonathan and Thomas sprayed their deodorant indoors, and with
the lack of ventilation, butane and propane must have built up
in the air around them, forcing them to breathe those gases.
So what happens when you breathe them in?
Let’s start with propane.
Propane is a colorless and odorless gas, made as a byproduct of the
refinery process, it’s also used as a part of liquefied petroleum gas.
In a study looking to see the effects of propane inhalation using
the National Advisory Committee for Acute Exposure Guideline Levels
for Hazardous Substances, found that after 10 minutes of exposure
to propane at 10,000 parts per million, volunteers felt nothing.
After 2 minutes at 100,000 ppm however,
all volunteers felt “distinct vertigo”.
In a second test made on beagles, researchers exposed them to
various levels of propane for 5 minutes, while injecting them
with epinephrine to monitor whether or not their hearts suffered
“sensitization”— A test to see if propane made them more susceptible
to heart attacks and other cardiovascular injuries or issues.
None of the 6 dogs had any heart issues at 50,000 ppm,
2 out of 12 dogs had some issues at 100,000 ppm, and
7 of 12 showed cardiac sensitization at 200,000 ppm.
The results seem simple enough.
The higher the concentration of propane,
the more sensitive you are to heart failure.
However, the study does note that most fatal cases of
propane intoxication are due to oxygen deprivation.
Propane replaces oxygen in an enclosed space, so you’d keep breathing
like normal, but slowly your brain would start being deprived of oxygen.
This also accounts for the sense of vertigo, as the main 5
symptoms of hypoxia, aka oxygen deprivation, are lightheadedness,
dizziness, mental confusion, visual impairment, and tingling.
According to Medline, propane takes the place of oxygen in your
lungs which can make it difficult to get the oxygen your body needs.
Remember when we learned that normal air contains
about 21% oxygen, and the rest is inert gas?
Well, using too much spray deodorant in an unventilated room can
shift the ratio of oxygen to gas in an enclosed space, slowly
depriving your brain of oxygen, leading to all sorts of bad news.
So could it be butane that took the lives of these young men?
Much like propane, butane is created from natural
gas, and as a byproduct of the refining process, its
effects on the body are actually well documented.
Butane operates as a central nervous system depressant, which means
that it “depresses” brain activity, which is not necessarily bad.
Prescription drugs that act the same way
include, valium, xanax, and ambien among others.
The issue with butane is that the fumes
are absorbed into the bloodstream rapidly.
Not only that, the chemicals are fat soluble, which means
they’re able to pass into the brain and other organs
easily, so the effects of inhalation take hold quickly.
The long term effects of butane inhalation include,
chronic headaches, nosebleeds, chronic coughs, depression,
anxiety, tinnitus— ringing in ears, ataxia— loss of muscle
coordination, shortness of breath, and sinus infections.
On top of that, butane has long term health
impacts like kidney, liver, and brain damage.
As well as chemical burns, seizures, and
visual impairment that can become permanent.
Addiction is also possible, however according to Drugs.ie,
a support resource from the Government of Ireland,
dependence is typically psychological rather than physical.
In short, there’s basically nothing good that can come from it.
You should only ever use spray aerosols in
well ventilated spaces and in modest amounts.
Most aerosol sprays have warnings on the label for exactly that reason.
Now, if all of those symptoms aren’t enough to convince you this
is bad news, there’s also SSDS, or Sudden Sniffing Death Syndrome.
Butane fume inhalation can cause, “cardiac arrhythmia”,
in which the heart starts beating irregularly.
Then, if the person who has been exposed experiences
excitement, or starts physical activity, the heart
can fail to pump blood, triggering a heart attack.
Not only is SSDS a very real threat to your life, the other
symptoms can also cause fatal accidents like choking on one’s vomit,
suffocation, and explosions due to the flammability of the gas.
So then, knowing what we know now, what happened to Thomas and Jonathan?
Both young men experienced cardiac issues, and while we can’t
be sure what exactly happened to them, it’s most likely that
they inhaled unhealthy amounts of butane and propane after
using too much spray deodorant in a poorly ventilated space.
After that, they probably started to feel some of the negative
effects of the chemicals, and likely triggered a heart
attack after experiencing cardiac sensitization or SSDS.
The bottom line is that we lost them, and we can’t get them back.
I don’t want you to come away from this episode thinking
“spray deodorant is bad and dangerous” because it isn’t.
It can be dangerous under the right circumstances, but
thankfully, those circumstances are pretty easy to avoid.
Always use spray deodorant in small
quantities, and in well ventilated spaces.
Like Jonathan’s mother said following his death, “You just get up in
the morning and spray it on, but who expects it to kill you?” It’s not
knowing what makes something dangerous that makes us vulnerable to it.
In a world that can only get more complicated,
understanding is our greatest protection.
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