WHAT
Ever bought something (skin care, make up, deodorant, lotions, cleaning products, laundry detergent, etc) and seen the ingredient "Fragrance"? I usually skim right by that assuming that’s okay, doesn’t look like a toxic chemical, so I don’t need to worry, right? Wrong. I know, I know- I'm always bursting the nice bubbles. But knowledge is power, and in this case knowledge is health.
The ingredient "fragrance" covers just over 4,000 different chemicals that can be used to add scent to a product. Many of these chemicals are considered to be hazardous to human health.
You can think of "Fragrance" as a catch all term for a blend of 4,000+ chemical compounds.
Phthalates, octoxynols, and nonoxynols are among the worse and known to be hormone disrupting. The issue is that these fall under the "fragrance" category and therefore companies don’t have to list them as an ingredient, just as fragrance. This leaves consumers like you & me in the dark if we are using products that could disrupt our hormones.
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE
A main reason to care is simply because we should be able to look at a product, see the ingredients on the label, and decide whether or not you want to buy the product. Concealing chemicals labeled as "fragrance" is not full disclosure and is hiding needed information from consumers.
California is going through the process to enforce a law to disclose what chemicals are being used as fragrance. Other countries have enforced this and limited the ingredients deemed safe to use.
The chemicals in these fragrances can also be found in breast milk. We obviously do not want to be feeding infants this, but the other point to finding trace chemicals in breast milk is that it means those chemicals are in your body. If you can find traces of certain chemicals in breast milk, those chemical are being absorbed into your blood stream.
Fragrances can cause allergic reactions to some including eye, skin, & respiratory irritations. The hormone disrupting ingredients used can cause an imbalance in hormones & increase your risk of breast cancer.
We want to avoid fragrances for our own personal health, but also to product the environment.
The ingredient Galaxolide, which is used in household cleaning products for fragrance, was shown to be in 81% of water samples from the Great Lakes. The levels found in the water are increasing each year. This means that this chemical is surviving through treatment plants and getting in our water supply. The human effect of Galaxolide is that it can disrupt your hormones and weaken your immune system attempting to fight off other chemicals.
HOW TO IMPLEMENT
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