The Hidden World of Fragrance: Why Nine Common Fragrance Ingredients Are Facing Regulatory Review

A recent email arrived from one of Britain's largest fragrance suppliers. At first glance it looked like the sort of routine industry update that businesses receive every day, until one phrase appeared.

CMR 1B classification.

CMR stands for Carcinogenic, Mutagenic and Reprotoxic. In simple terms, it is a classification used by regulators for substances suspected of having the potential to cause cancer, genetic mutations or harm to fertility and reproduction.

Under European regulations, ingredients receiving this classification will no longer be permitted to be used in cosmetic products, and they will become heavily restricted in products such as candles, wax melts, room sprays and reed diffusers.

Fragrance suppliers, manufacturers and regulators have been discussing these changes behind closed doors, and the people who may already have products containing these newly banned ingredients sitting in their homes, on their shelves ,are unlikely to hear a word about it.

The email explained that several fragrance ingredients are currently being reviewed under the European Union's Chemical Strategy for Sustainability, a major programme forming part of the EU Green Deal. The aim sounds sensible enough. As scientific understanding evolves, regulators periodically reassess chemicals used throughout industry to determine whether they remain appropriate for use. That is exactly how regulation should work.

What is harder to understand is why so few consumers know these reviews are taking place at all. After all, fragrance is not some niche product category. We burn it in our living rooms, spray it onto our clothes, diffuse it through our homes. Wash our bodies with it, wear it on our skin.

Yet the fragrance industry remains one of the most secretive consumer industries in existence. Even the word "fragrance" can legally conceal hundreds of individual ingredients, the composition of which remain protected as a ‘trade secret’, hidden from public view.

In effect, the ingredient responsible for the scent, often the entire reason a customer purchases the product in the first place, is often the ingredient they know the least about.

The more I read the supplier's email, the more one question kept returning: how many people currently have products in their homes containing ingredients that are under regulatory review and have absolutely no idea?

The answer is likely to be millions, since the fragrance industry has become extraordinarily skilled at selling nature without supplying it; flowers pictured on packaging never come anywhere near a finished product.

Take bluebell fragrance., one of Britain's most recognisable floral scents, and currently on the list of formulas needing to change. 

There is no commercially produced bluebell essential oil (naturally extracted from nature). The scent consumers recognise as bluebell is created in a laboratory using carefully selected aroma molecules designed to recreate what perfumers believe a bluebell should smell like.

Peony fragrances tell a similar story; the lush pink flower featured prominently across packaging, marketing campaigns and social media posts contributes nothing at all to the fragrance itself. What consumers smell is a synthetic accord - a carefully constructed blend of aroma chemicals designed to evoke the idea of peony rather than the flower itself.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that, apart from when it is marketed - and it almost always is - as coming from the flower itself.  

Consumers are routinely encouraged to associate fragrance with nature when it isn’t, and this matters because fragrance ingredients are not without controversy.

Over the past two decades, scientific researchers have increasingly examined links between certain fragrance-related chemicals and a range of health concerns, including asthma, skin sensitisation, respiratory irritation, endocrine disruption and reproductive effects. Some fragrance ingredients have been identified as potential endocrine disruptors, chemicals capable of interfering with the body's hormonal systems. Others have been examined for possible effects on fertility, development and long-term health.

The supplier's notification listed dozens of popular fragrance oils affected by the current regulatory changes. Names such as Bluebell, Fairy Dust, Clean Cotton, Black Pomegranate, Pear & Freesia, Peony & Blush Suede, Frankincense & Myrrh and Pink Champagne & Pomelo appear in countless products sold throughout the UK. Some are found in artisan candles, some appear in luxury collections, others feature in products sold through online marketplaces and social media.

If you have products with these names sitting in your home, you simply have no way of knowing if it contains a shortly-to-be-banned-chemical.

The label won't tell you, the packaging won't tell you, and the marketing won't tell you.

A relatively small number of specialist fragrance suppliers provide oils to thousands of manufacturers. A fragrance developed by a single supplier can eventually appear in products sold by businesses all over the country. Different labels, different branding, different stories, but often the same fragrance source.

Which means that when regulatory changes affect a fragrance supplier, the impact can ripple throughout an enormous portion of the market.

This is why I have never used fragrance oils in my own products and never intend to.

For me, there is a fundamental difference between an oil distilled from a plant and a fragrance created behind layers of proprietary formulas protected by trade-secret law. One can be traced back to its source. The other disappears behind a single word -"fragrance."

There is a good chance that somewhere in your home right now is a product containing ingredients that regulators are actively reviewing over concerns relating to cancer, genetic mutations, fertility or reproductive health.

Think about that next time you take in a deep breath.