You might see the word 'fragrance' written in quite a few places when it comes to consumer products. Whether we're talking about your personal care, your cleaning or your home care products, the word fragrance is almost always listed, but what does it mean exactly?
Well, a lot of the time we can never really be sure exactly what has made up that fragrance and here's why; the word fragrance can be used in many products to describe a whole host of ingredients, so long as those ingredients have been used to contribute towards making the scent of the product, then it doesn't always have to be disclosed what they are and yet we do know that a lot of these ingredients used can be potentially harmful to us.
Often ingredients used and not disclosed contain carcinogens, endocrine disrupters, neurotoxic chemicals, and environmental toxicants. These can be extremely harmful to us and our environment, and yet most of the time we are not aware that they are even present, as they fall under the oh so secret 'fragrance' umbrella.
So what can we do to avoid such harmful products in our day to day lives? We can start by checking what ingredients are in the products that we are using day in day out, and if these vague words such as 'fragrance' do occur, then we can question those companies to explain further on what they mean, what exactly has made up those scents and demand more transparency. We can consciously chose to buy from businesses that don't try to hide such things from their customers, as they are likely the ones with the more natural ingredients to begin with and nothing to hide. We can opt for products with more natural scents such as pure essential oils which are extracted straight from nature's plants and flowers, or go fragrance free if you are particularly sensitive to scents altogether.
Let us know what surprises you have come across in your daily products, we'd love to hear from you.
Thanks for reading.
Emma
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