It began with an unidentifiable smell—a low-level disturbance in the sensory force that fogged my brain and set my usually even-tempered cat on edge. I had just moved into my new place a few months before, and was still learning the vagaries of the house. For instance, I learned I had to run the dishwasher with vinegar every few days to ward off mildew, and that not washing the jetted bathtub at least once a week was a recipe for a sneezing fit. (I defy your judgement—my job can keep me so busy that I forget to wash it.)

Once I realized that the air quality in the house had been altered, I began employing all the tricks I knew to return it to normal. I bleached the bathtub, the shower curtain, and my shower gloves. I treated the toilet tanks and bowls with Oxyclean. I ran the dishwasher with vinegar, and poured diluted vinegar down the sinks. I washed my dirty clothes, and deodorized the washer. I checked the refrigerator for spoiled food. I confirmed that the trash had been taken out. And yet, after all of that, the irritating smell remained. Just under the level of my consciousness, I could smell something that woke me up early in the morning before my alarm and caused me to lose focus as I worked out of my home office. My cat, a diligent recorder of smells, also kept at me to find the cause, walking up to me several times during the day and meowing distractedly, while avoiding my hand when I bent down to pet him. Something was wrong, and it was up to me to correct it.

Determined to find the problem, I began walking around the house, my hands clasped behind me, sniffing at each area like a bloodhound. Eventually, I came to my own room. My somewhat sensitive nose told me this is where the offending smell was coming from. Oddly enough, I’d slept in my room with the door closed for several nights, and noticed nothing. I think this is why my cat can be so insistent with basic smells. If there is any change in the smell of the house, from roasting potatoes in the toaster oven to flat ironing my hair, he’ll walk up to me and meow pointedly. Sometimes I feel a bit insulted. I’m certain he thinks I have no sense of smell. Or, perhaps more accurately, he thinks that his ability to detect scents is far superior to mine. When it came to the unidentified smell in my room, apparently he had been right. I had slept in that room with no inkling that anything was wrong, except perhaps, in hindsight, a slightly stuffy nose.

Sniffing about in the room led me to the cozy grey throw I had bought some months before from a popular local market. Up until recently, it had been stored in an ottoman in the living room, and I’d used it to cover myself when I’d stretch out on the couch. I’d noticed that there was a slight chemical smell to it, but didn’t feel concerned, figuring that it would dissipate over time. Each time I’d finished using it, I’d placed it back into the ottoman, which had been effective at trapping the chemical odor. However, when I’d gotten a stain on the throw, I’d washed it and kept it in my room until I had a chance to fold it and place it back into the ottoman. Eventually, it had become part of the regular landscape of the room, and I’d forgotten about moving it back to the ottoman. But now, my nose and my cat were telling me that the chemical odor, which had been briefly camouflaged by the flowery scent of my detergent, was returning with a vengeance.

I searched the internet for tips on how to get chemical odors out of fabrics, and found that the most common recommendations were repeated washings with detergent and Oxyclean, and soaking the fabric in vinegar. Unfortunately for me, repeated washings had no effect on the smell, which seemed to be embedded into the fibers, and soaking the throw in vinegar only added an acidic element to the odor, which further irritated my sinuses and drove my long-suffering cat into the yard for some relief. Sadly, I could not exorcise the smell, and was forced to toss the throw out to restore my sanity.

Of course, after wasting $20 on a throw that I later had to trash, I vowed to never buy fabrics from that store again. But a few months later, I saw an advertisement for a soft, chunky, knitted throw from a different grocery store that I knew I had to have. “What’s the likelihood that this throw will have the same issue?” I thought. Turns out, the chances were pretty good.

The same day I brought the beautiful, soft throws home (I’d bought two in my effusiveness), my cat warned me that something was off. He had been curled up on the couch like an orange croissant, attempting to take a nap, but immediately began suspiciously sniffing the air when I placed the throws on the glass coffee table in the living room. I myself only whiffed something close to peppermint when I’d bent my nose to the fabric. Surely this wouldn’t cause any problems.

Unlike the previous throw, I’d decided to wash my new purchases before use. The way that they were packaged, they had surely been caressed by numerous people’s dirty, dirty hands before I’d gotten them, and sanitizing them seemed like a reasonable precaution. Once they’d been washed and dried, I was dismayed to find that what had once been a slight aroma reminiscent of peppermint had morphed into a strong stink akin to used cat litter. There was nothing to do but to try washing them again. But still, the smell lingered. Repeated washings with detergent and Oxyclean had no effect. Soaking the throws in vinegar only added that acidic edge to the stink. Once again, there was nothing to be done but toss the stubborn throws—and my $30—into the garbage. I’d been scammed again.

After these experiences, I’m actually at a bit of a loss on what to do next. Obviously, I still need a throw for my couch. But also obviously, I cannot trust the quality of the fabrics sold at my local grocery stores. The fabrics, although soft and cozy, were so steeped in harmful chemicals, that I could not breathe properly when I brought them inside my house. On one night when I was attempting to soak the chunky knit throws to remove the smell, I took a nap and dreamt that little men painted with skulls and crossbones were dancing around me. I woke up and found that the air conditioning, which I’d been using to air out the house as the throws soaked, had reached its target temperature and stopped blowing, leaving the air in the house saturated with the offending smell and difficult to breathe. Since I rarely dream, I knew what I’d seen had been significant. My brain wasn’t mincing words—I was being poisoned.

I had gone to my local grocery stores and bought fabrics that my body subconsciously recognized as having been dipped or treated or sprayed with poison. Stepping back and looking at the situation objectively, it seems like a nightmare scenario. In my searches on the internet, I learned that fabrics are often treated with formaldehyde derivatives or fire retardants, to keep them from wrinkling or catching on fire. Multiple washings should remove the chemicals and the accompanying smells, and if this doesn’t happen, there is something wrong with the fabric. In my case, there had been something wrong with both of the fabrics that I’d spent my hard-earned money on. And, in buying the admittedly eye-catching fabrics, I’d spent days in a closed room breathing in formaldehyde derivatives, and possibly fire retardants, both known to be correlated with cancer. This is on top of the already present cancer risk of being exposed to the fabric that the throws were made out of, polyester, which is a petroleum derivative.

What is the answer? To spend copious amounts of money on natural fabrics? To knit my throws myself? I don’t know. But this is America in the 21st century. In attempting to make everyday products affordable to the average consumer, is a desperate quest for unpolluted fabrics the best scenario we can hope for?