Daily Detox: Fragrance

You were going to get a post about cosmetics or personal care, but I realized that is just too BIG to be a daily detox! That is a project that takes years, as I know from experience. If you care about finding products that are safe for you and your family, enhance the lives of the people who make them, AND work, that's a serious undertaking!

photo: beautorium.com

So, I'm starting with Fragrance. You'll see it on your ingredients list as "fragrance," "perfume," or "parfum," or some other version of that. It's in perfume, of course, shampoo, lotion, lip gloss, laundry detergent, candles, air freshener, you name it. In a nutshell, it's poison.

Ok, I'm being dramatic. It's not always poison, but it often is! Because of trade secret laws, it's ridiculously difficult to find out what's really in those chemical formulas. But most of us know from experience that some fragrances cause headaches. Some cause our eyes to itch and water, our throats to close, our breath to change. Nearly everyone knows someone who is highly sensitive to added fragrance--and there are reasons for that! Those poor souls get a tough rap, but they might just be ahead of the rest of us in caring for their health.

Some fragrances contain neurotoxins. (Read: brain poison.) Some contain known allergens. Most contain materials we don't know enough about. Most contain pthalates, which mess with your hormones, can cause birth defects, or cause cancer. This stuff can also irritate the skin and make us look bad.

Of course, there are many conversations around the relatively low levels of these products in our self-care supplies. But I'm not interested in using them at all! Some of them accumulate in the body. All of them accumulate in the water supply. Think about it: millions of people using synthetically scented body wash, which goes down the drain, into the sewer system, and back into the water. And if you're thinking we can't absorb these items via skin, think again. We absorb birth control hormones, nicotine, and antibiotics transdermally. What's the difference?

So what can we do?

-Avoid the ingredients fragrance, perfume, or parfum. Be careful when you see a label that says unscented--sometimes fragrance is added to mask the scent of other ingredients. Check the label!

-If you like to use scents, try natural solutions. Use products scented with essential oils (though be careful--you may be sensistive to some of these.) Freshen your home by boiling citrus peels on the stove. Make natural febreeze-type spray out of 1:1 vodka-water mixture, plus a few drops of essential oils for fun. Be creative--you'll find tons of good stuff on the internet!

I am loving LAVANILA for fragrance and other personal care products. It's a bit of a splurge, but certainly less than your department store fragrances. They have all kinds of yummy products without all the yucky extras. Now if we can get them to clarify their sourcing, ensuring people are treated well across the supply chain, it would be just about perfect.

Aura Cacia is a good source for essential oils. They do a pretty good job with their sourcing, too.

What about you? How do you avoid pesky chemicals in fragrance?

Again, check out No More Dirty Looks for more info. Their book is my personal handbook and where I find lots of this stuff.