DETROIT, Michigan - March 15, 2010 - Detroit officials are telling workers in city offices to leave smelly perfumes, deodorants, and other strongly scented toiletries and items at home. The signs are going up in response to a federal lawsuit, which also awarded $100,000 to Susan McBride, who sued the city under the Americans with Disabilities Act, claiming a co-worker’s perfume made it difficult for her to breathe and do her job.

The city fought the 2008 suit, citing a lack of a medical diagnosis and arguing that McBride is not disabled. But the move this week to warn workers to refrain from using strong-smelling products is a clear sign the city is following through with some of the measures the judge ordered last month. The signs will warn workers to avoid "wearing scented products, including ... colognes, aftershave lotions, perfumes, deodorants, body/face lotions ... (and) the use of scented candles, perfume samples from magazines, spray or solid air fresheners."

At some point in our working lives, we all have sat next to someone with a heavy hand on the perfume bottle, hairspray can, or in their choice of deodorants. Dealing with an over-scented coworker can be difficult, but when you've got a medical condition, like asthma, it can literally and negatively affect the air you breath. McBride's attorney, Ann Curry Thompson, says it's not uncommon for stories about a lawsuit like this to be the subject of lots of jokes, but that's part of educating people about the fact that what is merely annoying to one worker can be debilitating to another.

She likens this education effort to the early days of the campaign to prohibit smoking in workplaces. It's not fair to put the chemical-smells issue completely into the hands of employees to deal one-on-one with each other, the Detroit-based workplace attorney told Yahoo! Shine. "It pits employees against one another," she said. "When there is no policy, no alternative than to go directly to the offending employee and ask the employee to stop, it tends to cause conflict."

So while this case does not mean every employee can slap up a sign telling coworkers to use smelly products on their own time, it does provide a precedent for employees to show their own employers about the need for a policy related to chemical smells.

Right now, employees have to individually make the case that they are physically impaired because of another coworkers' product-use, said Robin Bond, a workplace attorney. But the success of this case, brought using the Americans with Disabilities Act, could lead to more cases like it as scent-plagued workers find they may have an effective tool to force employers to deal with differences over overly fragrant coworkers.

Thompson says her research revealed that many employers do have policies regarding chemical scents. But, clearly, many more do not. "I'm persuaded that over time people will understand that scents in the workplace are chemicals just like ammonia or anything else that some people are sensitive to in varying degrees," Thompson said.

Has an over-scented coworker ever driven you to distraction? While there can never be a truly smell-free work environment, do you think there should be chemical-scent policies in the workplace similar to no-smoking policies?