There are thousands of chemicals involved in the manufacture of the thousands of commercial scented products available to consumers. Natural ingredients are usually confined to the more sophisticated and demanding perfume industry. A single perfume bought over the counter can contain many hundreds of different chemicals. It may well have an essential oil component used as a base or as a fixative, but the final formula will constitute artificial or petroleum based chemicals.   The lighter skin perfumes and colognes will be comprised of a small amount of oil and up to 80% or more ethanol with a drop of colouring matter.

These artificially created aromatics should be tested before release in order to measure their safety or determine if there exists a potential carcinogenic factor or that it can cause harm to the brain and nervous system.

It is the artificial chemicals that we are concerned about.  Some of them when inhaled have a directly damaging affect on the brain. Others spark off allergies and asthma attacks.  Some chemicals used in perfume are known carcinogens. Others are capable of causing birth defects.

This is the responsibility of the FDA in America and of the Health Departments in other countries. It would be no surprise to learn that to prove a substance safe requires a long period of time and keen assessment. A clearly harmful substance could possibly show quickly by tests conducted on animals. These tests are often conducted by the chemical companies that manufacture the products. But there is little likelihood that any agency could guarantee positive benefits and outcomes. However, as consumers we must trust the government health agencies and hope that their decisions will protect us.

However, alongside this hope, we cannot but entertain a through of the demonstrations we have had of their failures in protecting public health.  We recall the ever present power of the tobacco industry, the potentially dangerous drugs freely allowed display on supermarket shelves, the continuing pressure to chlorinate and fluoridate our drinking water, the plastics and carcinogenic properties ….. all these practices continuing in spite of public opposition.

So we must learn to protect ourselves from the known hazards and trust that our health authorities will in time assert their power, privilege and responsibility to overpower the pressures of industry.

Although there are exceptions and some milder products and scents are not harmful, it is only by direct inhalation of essential oils of quality that we can expect to benefit.

The beautiful natural life blood of the trees, flowers, leaves is concentrated in these oils created in Nature’s wondrous laboratory.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 6:08 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.