Viral warning about women dying from inhaling poisonous perfume is false

If you’ve ever had a friend or family member send you a chain message warning you of danger, it can be alarming. 

Several VERIFY viewers, including Annie, received one of these chain messages. It claimed a police department in Washington, D.C. warned that seven women died after inhaling poisonous free perfume samples that were mailed to them. Annie emailed VERIFY to ask if the warning was real.

THE QUESTION

Did police in Washington, D.C., issue a warning about seven women dying from inhaling poisonous perfume samples?

THE SOURCES

• Elizabeth Grannis, Public Information Officer for the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C.

• Gleneagles Hospital 2013 Facebook post

• Metropolitan Police Department’s First District 

• Archive of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website

THE ANSWER

No, police in Washington, D.C., did not issue a warning about seven women dying from inhaling poisonous perfume samples. This claim is a decades-old chain message hoax. 

WHAT WE FOUND

A chain message that claims to be from the Metropolitan Police Department’s Office of Risk Management and Gleneagles Hospital is not real. The fake message, which says seven women died after inhaling poisonous perfume that was mailed to them, has been going around for more than 20 years in different forms.

The message starts by saying the news comes from “Glen Eagles Hospital.” There is no Glen Eagles Hospital in the United States. There are, however, Gleneagles Hospitals in other locations, including Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. The Gleneagles Hospital in Kuala Lumpur released a statement on Facebook back in 2013 saying the message is a hoax. In the post, the hospital confirms that the message did not originate from their hospital and says they “have never admitted or treated such patients and have never been aware of such incidences.” 

The current form of the chain message says the message is from “Diane J. Ford, Office of the Chief of Police Office of Risk Management” located at “101 M Street SW Washington, DC.” There is an Office of Risk Management in Washington, D.C., but it is not located at this address. The Metropolitan Police Department website says the Office of Risk Management is located at 300 Indiana Avenue, NW, Washington, DC. 

The address listed in the message is actually for the Metropolitan Police Department’s 1st District station. VERIFY reached out to the police station, and Elizabeth Grannis, Public Information Officer for the Metropolitan Police Department, confirmed that the chain message is not real.

A DC Government Employee listing mentions a Diane Ford that has worked for the Metropolitan Police Department since 1991, however, it is unclear if this has any relation to the origin of the message.

This chain message has been sent around for many years. Facebook posts mentioning the scenario date back to as early as 2009. 

Before social media, it was a common email hoax. A now-archived page from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website from November 2001 calls the messages a hoax and says they are a variation of another hoax called the Klingerman virus.

Another archived CDC page, from May 2001, explains that the Klingerman virus hoax was an email chain message that said multiple people became sick with a viral infection after using a sponge from a gift package delivered in the mail.

This chain message has repeatedly been debunked by different news organizations over the years.