Fear of fragrance

When I was younger one of my favorite stores was Bath & Body Works. I could smell the store in the mall before I could even see it in my vision. My favorite perfume growing up was Juicy Couture, I loved using Tide detergents and fabric softeners that made my laundry smell so fresh and inviting. As my young and innocent mind grew older, I started to learn more and more about the truth behind fragrance. What the manufacturers of all these amazing smelling products don’t want you to know is that the fragrance we all grew to love and adore growing up is actually highly toxic. The chemicals used to make fragrances have been studied and proven to be neurotoxins, allergens, hormone disruptors, can trigger asthma, carcinogens, and contribute to so many more health concerns. Our society does not realize that fragrances exposed to our skin can then be absorbed into our bloodstream. Most fragrances contain phthalates which causes risks of birth defects, respiratory concerns, endocrine disruption, cancer, and reproductive toxicity. Then you have the increasing number of people around us who have chemical sensitivities, and simply wearing perfume and standing next to these individuals in a grocery line can cause them to get sick. The manufactures of any fragrance product are not forced to list the ingredients, they simply have to indicate fragrance on the label, which can include over 100 toxic chemicals. Do I miss smelling nice or using fragrant products? Of course I do, and our world does not make it easy to find safe products that is cost efficient. The best advice I could give you from personal experience of seeing the effects fragrance can have on our health, is avoid it all. It is important to think of others around us that we effect by using fragrance , but also ourselves and our children who are growing up and developing asthma as a young child, skin conditions, or even hormone disruptions. The Environmental Working Group is a great reference to check products before you buy them to see what their toxicity level is and if they are considered safe. You have to watch out for “natural fragrance” too because there is no standard criteria of what it actually means. So go outside of your comfort zone this week and go support a local business and do something to benefit your health and buy fragrance free detergent, or a diffuser w/ essential oils to replace candles, anything you want to try and replace in your house that contains fragrance. Make it a fun shopping experience that is allowing you to expand your mind and getting you to try something new.

Find out from EWG which toxins are contained in various fragrance products used daily.