Are air fresheners safe?

Rick B writes at Ten Percent blog

I’m not really asthmatic but plug in air fresheners, odour eliminating/spray cans, in general- chemical cocktail air polluting things whether fragranced or supposedly to remove odours seem to give me symptoms of asthma. I mooched around the web quickly and found I am not completely alone and mad on this (although as this is a new area of research there are not a lot of studies, but certainly something is afoot). It looks like what goes into these things has yet to be fully assessed for their combined impact on the people who willingly buy the things then slowly gas themselves in their own home-

Rick quotes some studies:

A study recently published in American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, found the regular use of sprays increased the risk of asthma by 30 to 50 percent. The study was done by the European Community Respiratory Health Survey, and followed 3,500 people in 10 European countries. . .

Rick comments, "Jeebus, I might as well have continued smoking, at least I’d look cool while I died. . . ." As a non-smoker, I much prefer breathing second smoke to chemical air freshener. Another dubious chemical people are deliberately putting into the air they breathe is mosquito coils smoke.

Photo: Shows a popular air freshener made in Thailand. I walked into a room that had been freshly sprayed with the stuff and was coughing for a month thereafter. Who knows what it contains? The bottles sure don't say! Spraying made-in-China, Made-in-Thailand, made-anywhere synthetic anything into the air these days is not such a good idea.