Claim: Seven women have died from sniffing perfume samples sent to them in the mail.
Example:[Collected on the Internet, 2001]
I DON'T KNOW WHERE THIS CAME FROM BUT...
I feel that it is important to inform you of very important information that I was told. Seven women have died after smelling a free perfume sample that was mailed to them. The product was poisonous. If you receive free samples in the mail such as lotions, perfumes, diapers etc... throw it away. The government is afraid that this might be another terrorist act. They will not announce it on the news because they do not want to alarm us of any danger.
Origins: This warning of impending danger surfaced in e-mail in mid-October 2001. There's nothing to it — no such deaths have been reported. The premise that the government would keep such matters from the public so as not to cause panic is laughable, especially in light of Attorney General John Ashcroft's repeated vague warnings about further terrorist activity to come and the media's fascination with the anthrax body count. Even if the government had the power to keep such news under wraps, is it at all reasonable to believe seven grieving families would stay silent about the deaths of their loved ones?
This baseless bit of scarelore appears to be a combination of two older, equally unfounded pieces of the same genre — the perfume robbers tale (women in parking lots lured into sniffing cut-rate perfume lose consciousness and are robbed while they're out) and the Klingerman virus scare (blue virus-laden sponges mailed in envelopes marked "A gift for you from the Klingerman Foundation" have caused 23 deaths.) But lore moves forward with the times, so this newer caution incorporates "terrorists" (presumably Middle Eastern) into the
mix.
One of the ways we cope with terrifying times is to try to fill in the gaps of the unknown. In frantic pursuit of this goal, misinformation and information are accorded almost the same weight, and rumors and "warnings" speed along on very fast feet indeed. Such heads up as this fallacious e-mail express current fears about deadly substances arriving by mail, but they also help us feel better about having to live in such dangerous times through the reduction of a nebulous lurking threat to a matter of something that can be dealt with. "Beware of perfume samples" is far less indistinct (and thus far less unsettling) than "Beware of all mail," let alone the anxiety-ridden reality of "We don't know where, when, or how the next attack will occur, so be wary of everything."
In early 2002, this particular warning received a shot in the arm from having been passed through the County Attorney's office of Harris County, Texas. Franchell Plummer, an administrative assistant working for that service received the e-mailed warning from a friend and unthinkingly forwarded it to others in the manner that so many do. Her signature block became incorporated in the alert, with many taking its presence there as a sign that the information contained in the warning had been vetted by a state attorney's office and that indeed this was an official warning about a real and verified threat. It wasn't — it was a case of a low-level employee forwarding baseless scaremail to others. Ms. Plummer was officially reprimanded for her act.
The Harris County Attorney's office has disavowed the e-mail and has been telling all who call to ask that it's a hoax.
A version that completes with the tagline "JHU Office of Communications & Public Affairs" has similarly been disclaimed by that institution. According to Dennis O'Shea, executive director of communications and public affairs at The Johns Hopkins University, "This warning message was not issued by my office nor has my office in any way authorized it or any message like it."
Barbara "the devil you eau de cologne" Mikkelson
Last updated: 8 April 2008
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/rumors/perfume.asp
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