Health Department: What’s Really In Your Perfume?

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At Blisstree, we like to smell as delightful as the next woman, but we haven’t put that much thought into what’s in the perfume we spritz on every morning. Have you? We all should, according a report from the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. Rather than list specific chemicals on bottles of perfume, many perfumes just list the ingredient, “fragrance.” This is like ingredients in your favorite soup being listed as “food.”

Looking at a sample of 17 popular perfumes, it was found that each had an average of 14 unlisted ingredients in them. In fact, the 17 fragrances contained an average of ten chemical sensitizers each, which can trigger allergies, asthma, headaches, and dermatitis when inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Food manufacturers are required to list every ingredient in their product to protect consumers from possible adverse reactions – why should perfume manufacturers be held to different standards?

Campaign for Safe Cosmetics included a call to Congress in the report, pushing for a change in the Federal Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1973, which would require manufacturers to list all chemicals in a perfume. Until that happens, check out the only two USDA-certified-organic perfume companies – A Perfume Organic and Red Flower.

via CNN