Raise your hand if you have a bottle of Febreze air freshening or fabric spray in your house. Okay, you can put your hands down. Actually, I have a feeling not too many POM readers have Febreze laying around the house.

I have never used Febreze products, so I do not have any anecdotal evidence pointing to their efficacy. However, the manufacturer, Proctor & Gamble (P&G), purports that it is the first company to develop technology that literally eliminates odors. As asserted by the company: “Back in 1994, a P&G research & development scientist discovered that a fancy little starch molecule used in dryer sheets (AKA cyclodextrin) could actually be used to clean away bad odors from fabrics—without throwing them into the wash. With an obsessive determination over the course of four years, he perfected that technology into a simple, water-based sprayable formula… and in 1998, Febreze Fabric Refresher made its debut.” Essentially, cyclodextrins used in the laundry product trap odor molecules so that they do not reach the scent receptors in your nose. This is curious in light of my previous POM post on chemosignaling and the significance of scents, as well as the phenomenon of anosmia purported to be a common symptom of COVID.

But that is not the full story . . . In its infancy, Febreze was not a marketing success. In fact, as reported in 2016 by Anand Damani, of Behavioural Design, it was a major flop, and P&G desired to promote their product more effectively. Apparently, as Damani elucidated, P&G hired behavioral experts to create a “craving” for the product, by instilling the habitual use of Febreze. In 2012, Charles Duhigg, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, who has a special interest in the science of habits (particularly, the militarized application of the science of habit formation) presented an interesting back story on the creation of the “Febreze habit loop.” He described that P&G had kept an extensive (and proprietary) library of videos of homemakers cleaning their houses, from which they studied their cleaning rituals. From their observations, the company’s R&D specialists had determined that a new marketing campaign needed to focus on the Febreze product being the final touch ritual after a cleaning session, emphasizing that the area cleaned would smell as good as it looked. But there was no reward there, because the product destroyed scents. Duhigg explained that the researchers went back to the lab, and P&G “spent another 3 million dollars inventing a perfume that was strong enough to withstand the chemicals of Febreze, so that they could pour it into the bottles.” Febreze sales skyrocketed, and it became a billion dollar a year product — chemically designed to “kill bad scents.”

My aim in this short essay is to clear the air on this “fancy little starch molecule” — cyclodextrin, and 2-hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin (HPBCD), in particular. So bear with me, as I geek out a bit on the science. I think, by the end, you will see why I took a vested interest.