The Secret is out

Ahhh...the sweet smell of petrochemicals! Let's just say it. They hate it but its the truth. The perfume industry stinks! When fragrance is formulated for scent over breath, outer beauty over inner beauty, you loose! When is the last time you looked at the labels on your scented beauty products and ditched the bad actors? Did you know there are over 3,100 stock chemical ingredients are used in perfume!

According to the Environmental Working Group, the average fragrance contains about 14 secret chemicals that aren’t listed on the label, many of which are linked to hormone disruption and allergic reactions, as well as about 80 percent of them not being tested for human safety in personal care products.

“Among them are chemicals associated with hormone disruption and allergic reactions, and many substances that have not been assessed for safety in personal care products.” The EWG adds that some of the undisclosed ingredients are chemicals “with troubling hazardous properties or with a propensity to accumulate in human tissues.” Examples include diethyl phthalate, a chemical found in 97 percent of Americans and linked to sperm damage in human epidemiological studies, and musk ketone, which concentrates in human fat tissue and breast milk. EWG explains that ingredients not in a product’s “hidden fragrance mixture” must be listed on the label, so makers disclose some chemicals but “lump others together in the generic category of ‘fragrance’.”

The EWG blames the U.S. government in part, pointing out that the Food and Drug Administration “has not assessed the safety of the vast majority” of secret chemicals used in spray-on products such as fragrances. “Fragrance secrecy is legal due to a giant loophole in the Federal Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1973, which requires companies to list cosmetics ingredients on the product labels but explicitly exempts fragrance,” reports EWG. As such, the cosmetics industry has kept the public in the dark about fragrance ingredients, “even those that present potential health risks or build up in people’s bodies.”

Protect Yourself
"When a product is sprayed into the air, it doesn’t just affect the person that sprayed it, but can cause many problems for other people around. It can throw their bodies into a frenzy of reactive behavior and trigger migraines, allergy symptoms, asthma, chronic lung disease and other health conditions. And even if people do not have immediate symptoms from these chemicals, due to the lack of testing these chemicals, we don’t actually know the long-term effects of spraying or rubbing them on our highly sensitive skin every single day. Perfumes are not the only culprit; these effects can come from furniture, adhesives, cleaning supplies, paints, and even paper". Read more here from the source.

Time for Aroma perfume

It used to be you could wear perfume and everyone would tell you that you smell great. Someone would come in for a hug and catch a scent trail. They'd ask you what you are wearing, where you got it and you'd gladly put your wrist out or let them come close to your neck. We all love to smell good and to have a signature scent. We love the attention fragrance allows. We also love that it covers unwanted smells. But that is so last year.

Four weeks ago the world changed. As we isolated at home, put on our sweatpants and tied our hair up in a scrunchy we ditched the heels, the lipstick, the foundation and probably the perfume too. It's sitting there, staring you down from the shelf where you collect your favorites at $100 or more a pop. Picked up on this trip, at that duty free, gifted during the holidays, replenished because that's YOUR scent, the bottles lined up, status symbols of yesteryear. I know my shelf is gathering dust.

Let's face it, alcohol is in demand. Perfume manufacturers are now making hand sanitizer with it. Even breweries and spirit makers are shifting supply chains to provide essential products with essential ingredients. Not quite as bad as toilet paper, which is somewhat hard to find, perfume is sitting on the shelf at those locked up retailers waiting for you to come out for Mother's day.

But maybe its time to rethink perfume? Maybe its time to treat scent as nature's gift and move away from the chemicals, the parabens, the phtalates that are hormone disrupting, the colorings and dyes and the big designer name brands that sell you a bottle a box with their name  on it at a premium.

When you learn more about what’s really in your perfume you might look for alternatives like aroma perfume. We are here for you when you are ready!

Take a look at how fragrance oils and alcohol-based perfumes stack up to each other. Which would you rather put on your skin? We think the choice is clear, it’s time to put down the cologne and perfume!