Hello everyone!
Today’s post is another #FormulaFriday! Everyone seems to be obsessed with fragrance in their cosmetics, so why don’t we see if there’s an actual reason for that!
What is it?
Fragrances are actually quite a complex blend of ingredients. They can be either natural or synthetic, and they are added to most today’s beauty products to give them an appealing scent. They can mask a smell of some ingredients, or simply add to the experience when using a product.
I am one of those people who really enjoy really nice scented things. However, when it comes to products I will be using on my face, subtle scents are welcome, while those that are stronger can really make me feel sick.
Some other labels
This is usually the shortest part of my little #FormulaFriday articles, but today I’m going to change that. First, let me list other labels for you. Besides ‘fragrance’, you can find:
- Aroma
- Parfum
- Perfume
- Essential oil blend
- Flavor
- Perfumery
One problem with this is… you don’t actually know the ingredients of the actual frangrance, which can be either very harmful or totally harmless. Companies will very rarely list the entire ingredient list for the fragrance.
The other problem… If you actually need a fragrance-free product, pay close attention to the next part.
Recently, a Croatian beauty blogger wrote about a Croatian ‘natural’ cosmetics brand (I know it’s in Croatian, but I have to give her credit, she’s awesome!). The brand says ‘parfum-free’ on the packaging, she’s in a hurry, doesn’t really check out the list of ingredients, but has a new cool product.
Well, once she came home later that day and actually checks out the ingredients list, it clearly said there is fragrance in it. Yes, parfum and fragrance is the same thing, they are synonyms! Yes, this is an awesome marketing stunt if you want to play that way, but it’s so not fair. No, the ingredient list doesn’t say parfum, but you still can’t say parfum free, if parfum and fragrance are LITERALLY the same thing! Learn from this experience, ladies! Read the ingredient list!
What they do?
Fragrances are there, obviously, to mask, or cover up, or what ever you want to call it, some scents in the product. Some ingredients can have a less pleasant scent, so frangrance comes in to the rescue.
Is fragrance harmful?
Some scientists have evidence linking them to health effects including cancer, reproductive toxicity, allergies and sensitivities.
Many of the ingredients in fragrances are irritants and can trigger allergies, asthma symptoms, migraines, dermatitis, respiratory distress and can have potential effects on the reproductive system. However, anyone might experience skin irritation or runny eyes and nose.
Besides fragrances being harmful to humans, they can also be very harmful to the environment.
My thoughts
Even though I like my products to smell nice, and I really don’t like the smell of natural cosmetics sometimes, I really do avoid heavily fragranced products. Perfume is something I will always wear and love, but I certainly can tone it down in my skincare or makeup.
I am not going to go on a fragrance (or parfum, yes, it’s the same, still)-free spree now, but I am going to be more careful of the ingredient lists when it comes to these. Also, I am definitely going to check if they disclose the actual fragrance ingredient list anywhere.
Resources
Before I list my resources, I have to say… don’t believe everything you find about the ingredients online. There were some so clearly biased websites that claimed that basically no one ever had an allergic reaction to fragrance, which is clearly not true and I will not include these websites here.
And that’s it for today’s post! Which ingredient would you like to see in some of the upcoming posts? Do you avoid fragrance in your skincare? Do you enjoy fragrances in your skincare?
See all of my previous #FormulaFriday posts.
Thank you for reading!
See you soon x
Follow me on Bloglovin | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest