Chemicals From Personal Care Products, Including Perfume, Polluting SF Bay
Last week, the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org) released a report highlighting the prevalence of hormone-disrupting chemicals from common consumer products, including perfume, which are accumulating in San Francisco Bay. These chemicals pose environmental hazards to humans and marine life in the area:
Hormone-disrupting chemicals from a wide variety of consumer products are polluting San Francisco Bay, posing risks to marine life and challenges for consumers and utility districts. Tighter regulatory controls on consumer products containing these chemicals are necessary to protect human and environmental health.
…Chemicals such as phthalates, bisphenol A, and triclosan are introduced into everyday products like cosmetics, antibacterial soap, perfumes, food and beverage containers and plastic bottles, with little regulatory oversight. Fish exposed to hormone-disrupting chemicals can develop “intersex” characteristics, such as males with immature eggs in their testes.
The whole article can be read at yubanet.com.
The presence of phthalates in perfumes is one of the reasons The Perfume Bee went green. To see just how prevalent these hormone-disrupting phthalates are in perfume, I looked at a recent study released by Consumer Reports.
They submitted 8 perfumes to a scientific laboratory for analysis and came up with some disheartening results. Of the 8 perfumes tested, all 8 fragrances contained phthalates. Worse still, two of them (Aveda Love Pure-Fume Essence and Aubrey Organics Jade Spice Eau de Parfum), which are touted as natural and phthalate-free, contained at least two different phthalates. The eight perfumes tested included:
- Aveda Love Pure-Fume Essence
- Aubrey Organics Jade Spice Eau de Parfum
- Celine Dion Parfums Eau de Toilette Spray by Coty
- Christian Dior Poison Eau de Toilette Spray
- Clinique Happy Perfume Spray
- Elizabeth Taylor White Diamonds Eau de Parfum
- Estée Lauder Beautiful Eau de Parfum Spray
- Liz Claiborne Curve Eau de Toilette Spray
The report states:
All the fragrances we tested contained at least these two phthalates: Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), which is banned in cosmetics in Europe, and diethyl phthalate (DEP), which is not banned and was present in much larger amounts. Our findings seem counter to a fragrance-industry survey that reported DEHP use is down to zero. (Consumer Reports)
These products did not list phthalates on their labels, because by law they can list the word “fragrance” without citing any of its components, including phthalates.
What is one to do? Switching to natural perfumes is one very clear choice.
Consumer Reports has some other suggestions:
If you use perfume, consider skipping it every other day-or drop it altogether if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding.
Seek out deodorants, hair sprays, body lotions, and other products that don’t list in their ingredients the word “fragrance” (or “fragrance/parfum”), which might indicate phthalates.
Be aware that even if a product says “unscented” or “fragrance free” on the label, there’s no guarantee it’s phthalate-free. Some “fragrance free” products include a masking fragrance to cover up the chemical smell of the raw ingredients (Consumer Reports)
I also highly recommend the EWG’s Consumer Data Base. It lists over 750 men’s and women’s fragrances and gives each a relative safety score based on its ingredients.
Tomorrow, I will discuss “Why we need to be concerned about phthalates in perfume.”
