Help!!! In a panic about burning incense!!!

[SingleSweetie]

DH and I bought a lovely incense stick holder during a trip to a wildlife park overseas. Since then, our daughters have loved choosing the sticks for this, and we probably burn one or two sticks every couple of days. Sometimes one a day.

I had no idea how dangerous these are to our health, and I’ve just read something which has alerted me to this. I’m in such a panic over what damage I may have done to my children! 😢😢

We’ve been burning incense for about 4 years!

Calm down. Just stop doing it if you don’t like what you’ve read but seriously, calm down. Your kids are fine.

Wait what? In what way is it dangerous? Where have you read this?

Have you used natural incense or synthetic sticks? How old are the kids?

I doubt you have done them any harm .. as long as it’s not continuous, and you have decent ventilation. Might even be good for your mental health

I have no idea really. They are bought from our local pharmacy, who seem to stock loads of random things.

There are places in the world where incense is burned daily and their children survive. You need to seek support re your anxiety.

The kids are 10 and 12

You can just stop burning them if you are worried but there is no point panicking after the fact.

Almost everything we do is dangerous if you look hard enough for an article on it. Do your kids ever eat bacon? Go read about that… or maybe just realise that life isn’t perfect, and sometimes things pop up which we didn’t really think about but haven’t done any real harm.
i assume you open windows and doors and ventilate your home and go about your lives… a few sticks of incense a week really aren’t a problem.

You really need to calm down and forget about it. Stop using them if you want to stop, but really getting into this level of worry is weird.

Mate the Catholic church burns loads of it and popes tend to live long lives.

Remember when eating beef was going to give everyone cjd and eggs gave you cholesterol.

When I was a kid bind weed was meant to be poisonous and you should never touch it and if you wiped the bottle everyone else had drunk from you were posh!

There are a million scare stories on the internet. The BBC love a "We're all going to drown in our beds" weather story.

Reading one article that's probably trumped up click bait isn't going to change the past

And I live in an incense all the time house, as far as I know I'm still OK

Life is dangerous. We can chose to live in fear of all the things that will slowly kill us or chose to live life and enjoy it

I'm pretty sure the Catholic Church are using it every day! What is your worry?

You're right to stop using it, it stinks

Your kids are so young their bodies can heal a lot at that age

(no idea what they are supposed to be healing from, mind you!)

What was the source of this information? What was the context? Yes there are some studies which suggest possible correlation with all manner of poor health outcomes, however, mostly in people who burn them all day long every day (like it would be common in some Asian cultures). You don't sound like you have them going 24/7 so they probably do no harm than going outside and inhaling whatever lingers in our air.

You are not wrong about the health risks but your children are probably fine if you just stop using it.

It doesn't seem to have done the populations of China and India much harm - there are billions of them!

My dad used to burn incense sticks at home, because he was Hindu. We all survived.

I better stop going to mass then

Quite.

OP's hysteria is quite concerning.

Quicksand has never been the problem I was lead to believe it would be as a child.

We used to have a book in the downstairs loo called You Might As Well Be Dead which listed all the things that have been labelled DANGEROUS by some "expert" somewhere or other.

I'd be embarrassed to display such unnecessary, OTT panic in public, even anonymously.

The OP is right to be concerned. So the condescending posts are unnecessary.

those saying g that Asia is fine…There is a direct link between burning incense and the rise of lung cancer in the Asian population. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cnr2.70095

OP im sure you didnt burn them 24/7 so id just stop using them now.

Variant CJD was caused by “mad cows” that was common in the 90s. Caused by consuming meat from a cow that had bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or "mad cow" disease). Strict controls are now in place to prevent meat from infected cattle entering the food chain.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease-cjd/

Unless you were directly inhaling the smoke I don’t think you’ll have an issue. What did you actually read?
You could try something like wax melts or an oil burner perhaps.