Fragranced products aren’t as heavily regulated in Australia as food or pharmaceutical products. Manufacturers can put the words ‘fragrance’ or ‘parfum’ on a list of ingredients rather than the specific chemicals used. This makes it more difficult for people to identify the substances they know may affect them.

The above is a direct quote from the following article:

Perfume stinks: how fragrances can affect your health

The article further goes onto state that:

About 1 in 3 people report having health problems when exposed to fragranced products. Those problems include asthma attacks, hay fever, headache, migraine, dizziness, breathing problems, rashes, congestion, nausea and seizures.

According to research by the University of Melbourne, some people have even lost work days or a job because of illness caused by fragranced goods such as air fresheners, cleaning supplies, laundry products and personal care items.

If you’ve clicked on the article you will see that it is on healthdirect which is an Australian government website.  The article details the toxic nature of fragrances and even gives tips to live a fragrance-free life.  This is all well and good, but the problem we have with this is the government is the overarching body that regulates fragrances in the first place.

So, on the one hand, they are letting these fragrances out into the public arena, but on the other hand, they are telling you how bad they are and how to avoid them… conflicting much? 🤷🏼‍♀️  At the bottom of the article it details where to seek help with this issue and plays a classic game of football and handballs finding a solution to the problem to you.  It even goes so far as to detail that if you have a workplace issue with fragrance and your employer is not addressing the situation, then you can report them to WorkSafe.

And people wonder why we don’t trust the government to keep us safe!

We really do think it’s great that they have published such an article on a government webstie, we just wish it equated to them then walking the walk and regulating the industry a whole lot better, where the consumer’s health was the first priority.  Because if consumer health was the first priority, then these toxic fragrances would be banned!  It would then force companies to clean up their ingredients.

Education is key, we get that, but passing the buck when the government could actually do something to correct what is a known problem just leaves us feeling frustrated.

Stink!

So, in light of education let’s take that a little further.

Let’s throwback to the time we interviewed Jon Whelan who created and directed the Netflix movie Stink!

This was such an eye-opener! After losing his beloved wife to cancer, Jon then becomes the sole parent to their two beautiful daughters. In an attempt to buy a nice gift for his daughters that they would love, he bought them some pyjamas from a fave online store of theirs, but when they arrived he noticed a strange smell coming from them. They were fragranced!

Why on earth do pyjamas need to be scented?

Perplexed by this very unnecessary notion Jon went on a journey to find out what the ingredients were in those fragranced pyjamas. You would think this would be a simple call to the manufacturer to get the answer, unfortunately, it wasn’t. What then transpired led him down a rabbit hole of potentially toxic secrets of the chemical industry.

It honestly blew our minds how deep this went. If you haven’t seen the movie, we highly recommend you do and then have a listen to this podcast episode for an even greater deep dive into something that simply should not be happening!

Listen in via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or Spotify and for the comprehensive show notes head here: https://additivefreelifestyle.com/podcast161/

Just the tip of the iceberg

Unfortunately, fragrance is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what to look out for in your cleaning and personal care products.  There are plenty more to look out for which is easy enough to do if you know what you’re looking for.

So, let’s again throwback to a previous podcast episode where we interviewed Krissy Ballinger about all the main nasty ingredients to look out for and what they do to your body.  Listen in via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or Spotify and for the comprehensive show notes head here: https://additivefreelifestyle.com/podcast102/

Tracey & Jo xx