“Fragrance” The name given to a mixture of thousands of potentially toxic chemicals.

The easiest step you could take to lower your body burden of toxic chemicals is avoiding anything with the listed ingredient “FRAGRANCE”. This mystery ingredient is also sometimes written as “perfum” or “aroma”. It may be easy because it’s one recognizable word, but as you’ll soon find out, it is in EVERYTHING, which makes avoiding it really difficult.

Types of products with fragrance include: Perfume, candles, air fresheners (plug-ins, sprays, scented trees in the car), soaps, shampoo and conditioner, deodorant, lotion, cleaning products, laundry detergent, fabric softener, dryer sheets/ dryer pellets, garbage bags, and baby wipes.

That one word, FRAGRANCE, covers up to 4,000 different chemicals. Companies that manufacture these products don’t need to list out all of the chemical ingredients in their fragrance concoction, because there is a loophole in the Federal Fair Packaging act of 1966 that lets it stay a “trade secret”. About 1,200 of these ingredients used in “fragrance” have been flagged as potential or known chemicals of concern. However, in the US chemical ingredients are innocent until proven guilty.

But if it’s being sold in stores it must be safe right? The FDA or the EPA make sure its safe before it can be on store shelves?

Not exactly…

In 1973, under the Toxic Substances Control Act, the EPA was given the power to regulate chemicals in consumer products largely due to public concern over pesticides. However, TSCA makes it pretty difficult for the EPA to regulate industry. Less than 1% of chemicals found in consumer products have been tested for their safety by the EPA. The EPA can only test a chemical to find out if it is toxic if companies have already shown the agency that the substance causes harm. Admittedly, there are a lot of chemicals and it is long, hard, expensive, work to do the toxicological testing.

In 2016, the Lautenburg Chemical Safety Act went into affect. It’s an an amendment of TSCA that allows for faster testing. Now 40 chemicals are under review at the EPA (out of 1,000s being flagged), so let’s see how it pans out.

Through the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, the FDA has some power to regulate cosmetic products. However, similar to the EPA, the FDA doesn’t check each ingredient of a cosmetic product before it’s allowed to come to market. They more-or-less respond to the self-reporting of safety information from the cosmetic companies. The industry is largely self policed by industry groups performing tests on the ingredients they are putting into their products. Seems like there could be room for bias here.

The system is structured this way because the US tries to strike a balance between innovation and safety, and tries not to interrupt commerce and economic growth. This is in contrast to many European countries who operate under the Precautionary Principle. To illustrate this difference, there are 11 cosmetic ingredients banned in the US and over 1,300 outlawed or restricted in the European Union.

Companies, manufacturers, or industry groups argue that “the dose makes the poison” and the tiny amount in their single product can’t cause harm.

In a sense they’re right, our bodies are amazing. A small, singular exposure to a certain toxin or toxicant might be detoxed from our body if we are healthy and our overall body burden of toxic chemicals is low. In a typical day most people are exposed to lots of personal care products in addition to all of the other environmental toxins in our air and water. In addition to this, some chemicals are persistent and can accumulate in our tissues. Other chemicals can wreck havoc on a sensitive system such as our endocrine system with just a tiny parts-per-million exposure.

“It’s not like I’m eating these products.”

How these chemicals get into our bodies isn’t something we typically think of. The primary routes of exposure for scented products is absorption through the skin and inhalation. Scented detergents linger on clothing which is then in contact with our skin. Lotion is rubbed right onto our skin. An air-freshener plug-in releases volatile compounds into the which are brought into our lungs with each sniff of “warm Christmas sugar cookie”. From our lungs or skin, these chemicals can pass into our blood. Enviornemtnal toxins from personal care products and scented cleaners are being found in blood, urine, breastmilk, umbilical cord blood, and in newly born babies showing that it crosses from mother to fetus.

What kind of chemicals are we talking about here?

And how do we even know what these chemicals are if it’s such a secret?

In 2011, the International Fragrance Association (IFRA) published a list of 2,339 possible fragrance materials used by IFRA affiliated members. Also scientists and independent research groups like the Breast Cancer Prevention Partners have preformed studies in which they test and see what’s in these products.

IFRA’s list of fragrance ingredients used to formulate fine fragrances, fragranced cosmetics and personal care products includes known and suspected carcinogens, chemicals that can cause cancer. These carcinogens are recognized as such by California’s Prop. 65 Program and the National Toxicology Program (NTP) and include chemicals such as benzophenone, methyleugenol and styrene. In the Breast Cancer Prevention Partners (BCPP)’s Right to Know report, they tested of 100 personal care products and 40 cleaning products revealed the possible carcinogens beta-myrcene, benzophenone, DEHP and endocrine disruptors such as phthalate DEP, oxybenzone, octinoxate and galaxolide.

Endocrine Disrupters such as phthalates are used to help make smells linger on your skin and in the air longer. This class of chemicals disrupts the endocrine system by posing as some naturally occurring hormones. EDCs (endocrine disrupting chemicals) can cause cancer, human reproductive and developmental toxicity, reproductive malformations when fetuses are exposed in utereo, birth defects, respiratory problems, reproductive issues such as infertility, obesity, and learning impairments. Hormones operate in our body’s endocrine systems on a parts per trillion level normally, which can be visualized as a teaspoon in an olympic sized swimming pool.

Additionally, some of these fragrance ingredients are thought to be neurotoxins, causing nerve cell degradation and Parkinson’s. Others can cause more acute systems such as triggering asthma or allergies.

What to do?

We need to look at the ingredient list on products we choose to use on and around our bodies. When a company chooses transparency and lists out the ingredients used with their “fragrance”, that’s usually a really good sign, however even a trained chemist may not know all of the toxicology of all of these chemicals. This is why using a resource like the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) app skin deep can be so helpful. You can use the app to scan the barcode of a product and see the rating that EWG has given it based on the health of it’s ingredients.

Note:

“Natural”, “organic”, “Fragrance-free”, or even “unscented” doesn’t mean much – flip the bottle over and be sure.

If you are trying to get rid of scented products and you are having trouble because you love to smell good, it may be helpful to be mindful that our sense of smell is evolutionarily. We’re wired to be sensitive to smells and associate memories with smells as this was advantageous to our survival as a species. I know I’ve been somewhere where I caught a whiff of perfume or cologne and I could tell you exactly who also wears that scent

I’ve also been someone who wanted to have a signature scent that people recognized. Your best bet is to practice good hygiene and rely on your pheromones.

Looking objectively at our desire to smell good may be an interesting thought experiment. What is it that I really want? Is it love? Attention? Do I want to be loved for smelling good or loved for making people feel like they can be their true selves around me? Confidence comes from within, and people will be more attracted to you when you’re being your authentic self than when you wear your ‘signature scent’.

Also remember that the fragrance industry is a billion dollar industry. There’s huge marketing and commercialization around this industry, which is powerful in penetrating our subconscious.

We’ve been trained to think that clean has a smell, when in truth that’s not the case. Clean shouldn’t really smell like anything.

Some healthy alternatives to help your home smell ‘good’: bake something, simmer a pot of water on the stove with natural things like cinnamon or citrus peels, essential oils in a diffuser, open a window for some fresh air

Fragrance may be the new second hand smoke and it’s only a matter of time before people see using an air freshener near a baby the same way as they would see smoking a cigarette near a baby.

In the meantime, spritz at your own risk.

Resources

If I was going to buy a ‘fragrance’ I’d buy this…

https://www.ewg.org/skindeep/products/945950-Asutra_Mist_Your_Mood_Instant_Stress_Relief_Patchouli__Bergamot/

Another resource to investigate product safety

https://www.madesafe.org/team/\

International Fragrance Association Transparency list

https://ifrafragrance.org/priorities/ingredients/ifra-transparency-list

Fragrance

https://www.safecosmetics.org/get-the-facts/chemicals-of-concern/fragrance/

https://www.safecosmetics.org/fragrance-disclosure/learn-more/health-effects-chemical-concern/#_ftn32

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/23/fragrance-perfume-personal-cleaning-products-health-issues