Something Smells…
It’s Not Me. It’s You. The Lasting Impact of Scent.
I am sorry to bring the funk, but I must. You: with the synthetic scents wafting everywhere – you are polluting my body and air. Your dirty scent is wreaking havoc from cars, cabs and candles. I walk down the street, minding my own business, when I am accosted by a scent so strong, yet so distinct I can imagine the bright package it came from. I know it exactly, not intuitively but it’s recognizable even though I don’t buy it, would never buy it. In fact, I have to hold my breath when I walk by the household cleaning section of the store. And when my kids have friends who come to our house – sometimes their scent transfers to my scent neutral zone and I become apoplectic. Because their synthetic fixatives do a darn good job of securing that scent where I do not want it.
I am merely one of the 30% of Americans who are sensitive to fragrance. I’ve encountered so many others who can’t stand being in public for fear of triggering an asthma attack. I know scores of people who fear taking a taxi because they might encounter the ghastly Little Tree Air Freshener or the dreaded “plug-in” fanning scent through an invisible mist triggering headaches, breathing difficulties and more.
Oh, and the stores, gyms, doctors offices, and hotels that perceive added scent as essential.
Please. Just. Stop.
Too much scent is too much. In this dirty age we live in, scent has become so sophisticated. It’s no longer a simple mixture from plants. Instead it’s overwhelming our senses with chemicals that do more than just perfume.
Scent is a very powerful thing. Scent can transcend time and space evoking long forgotten memories. Scent can bring a person to mind or a specific moment in time and place. This makes having a “signature scent” very commanding for any brand. After all, scents can be alluring, a provocateur, but for many of us, it can also be a problem.
Consider this, your brain can sift, sort and store smells in very tiny amounts or “concentrations” down to parts per trillion! Perhaps the enormous capacity for smell and the large number of receptors in the human brain is due to the fact that the olfactory system is believed to be our oldest sense. Uniquely to smell, all the processing happens directly in the brain where smells are sifted and stored. Many fragrance houses argue that their ingredients are inconsequential once you are beyond parts per million but is that really true if our minds can sense down so much farther?
I personally would hate to live in a world without any scent. It’s been shown that people who lose their sense of smell suffer from depression and more. Anosmia is the condition for someone who has lost their sense of smell. The University of Chicago conducted a study of adults and found that those with anosmia were four times more likely to die in the next five years over their peers with a sense of smell intact. Furthermore, our sense of smell can decline as we age and is associated with neurological decline as well. It turns out that smell is actually considered a bellwether for how healthy a person is.
While I love scent, I’ve found that not all fragrances are the same. There are two categories: synthetic and natural scent. I tolerate and enjoy natural fragrances made with botanicals. I love the wafting of cinnamon and cloves mulling in cider or water on the stove or a mist of citrus mist on winter day.
Natural fragrance comes from plant and botanical sources such as flowers, fruits, woods, resins and oils that are extracted and blended together. Where as synthetic fragrance is made in a lab. Many synthetic fragrances find themselves on my list of The Irrefutables.
Manufacturers claim the importance of synthetics from price to purpose. It’s fact that synthetics can offer a more consistent stable scent. They draw from a pallet of petroleum derived chemicals producing smells similar to notes found in nature as well as completely different. To get the desired performance, these synthetic fragrances require the use of chemical agents to ensure reliability, longevity, and shelf-stability. More than just “aroma” these products contain chemical stabilizers, fixatives, preservatives, colorants, deodorants, fillers, and more.
In contrast, natural fragrances can vary. When worn, they will interact and mix with an individual’s biochemistry and may shift or change. They won’t last for hours on end, the way synthetics do. But smell is part of an ancient evolutionary development for humans and our cells and bacteria, which also experience these compounds. For the overwhelming majority of the last 3 billion years, those responses were developed with natural sources of scent not chemical signature scent.
The study has yet to be conducted showing that natural fragrance is superior for our brains, bodies and bacteria but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it. Just like with food, we know natural substances can feed and fuel our bodies better than chemicals.
But whatever you call it – fragrance, perfume, parfum, scent or aroma – and whether it is naturally derived or synthetic is not required to be listed on a product’s label. Unfortunately this regulatory omission leaves consumers in the dark about generic fragrance in something. Thus, if you can not tell by the packaging information, assume it’s conventional fragrance. And conventional means synthetic; and it’s well documented that there are thousands of ingredients that can go into synthetic fragrance, and not all of them are even ‘fragrant’.
Many common synthetic fragrance ingredients are harmful to human health. Phthalates have been linked to reproductive and developmental harm. Synthetic musks like galaxolide and tonalide are likely endocrine disruptors that don’t break down in our bodies or the environment and are commonly found in blood and breast milk. There are also preservatives like BHT, short for butylated hydroxytoluene, a chemical compound used for preservation linked to endocrine disruption. Other known fragrance ingredients of harm are endocrine disrupting and potentially carcinogenic parabens and carcinogenic styrene.
When you consider it this way, who even wants to inhale those synthetics? It seems to me, we should work to preserve our potent sense of smell and not overwhelm it with fakes.
While our sense of smell pales in comparison to other animals, we have over 1,000 scent receptors in our brains, quite a lot when you compare it to say, touch, which has only four. And our human sense of smell can be quite precise. Therefore, preserving, protecting and even practicing our smelling sense is smart,.
Here are top ways to navigate and stimulate the world of scent more naturally.
Ditch your chemically intense personal care and household products for the fragrance free versions.
Tell your taxi that you want an unscented car…the more of us who ask the more common this becomes.
Practice smelling things out in the wild: good and bad. See what you can identify and what you can’t..
Practice smelling at home, breath in before you eat and enjoy the aroma from your fork, or when you’re doing food prep lean in and enjoy the spices blending as you stir, blend and season.
Light a naturally scented candle, use fresh aromatic flowers and plants, open a window and breathe the fresh air.
Collect herbs and infuse them into teas and oils and focus on their signature scents.
Try a natural scent, made from essential oils and other botanicals and enjoy the fact that they are fleeting…
For safely scented products use MADE SAFE certification as a guide. Every single scent permitted in a product has been vetted, requiring full 100% transparency so you can trust what’s inside those products.