Why You Should Strongly Avoid Perfume

What am I putting on my body?

This week I went out to a lecture in the evening, and during the night I ran into an acquaintance I hadn't seen in a long time. She immediately gave me a hug.

Her scent hit me fast, an aroma I couldn't quite tolerate.

A bad smell? Depends who you ask.

It was the scent of a synthetic substance we've learned to call perfume.

Perfume is a catch-all term for any liquid that gives off a pleasant smell.

Perfume is either derived from some natural source (plants) or manufactured entirely synthetically. In her case it was completely synthetic.

What made that hug hard was that her scent stuck to me instantly. You know the feeling? When after hugging someone you're left with their smell for hours?

It created an unpleasant sensation in my body, and after a few minutes I went to the bathroom to wash it off.

There's a reason I act this way.

The reason her scent stuck to me is that most synthetic perfumes today contain substances designed to do exactly that: to "glue" the substance to our bodies.

What substances am I talking about? It's complicated.

The simplest way to know what's inside a product we use would be to read the ingredient list.

In the case of perfumes, because of laws meant to protect perfume manufacturers from sharing "trade secrets," most commercially sold perfumes are loaded with harmful chemicals that aren't individually listed on the ingredient label.

Instead, these lethal chemicals are simply covered by the term "fragrance," an umbrella word that can refer to a wide range of different ingredients.

Phthalates are among the most studied and reviewed chemicals widely found in perfumes.

Let's dive deep into this chemical.

Phthalates are a group of man-made chemicals developed over the past century for use in the plastics, solvents, and personal care manufacturing industries. They're used to soften plastic and increase its flexibility, and they appear in a wide range of products such as health products and perfumes.

Phthalate is a hormone disruptor.

What disrupts our hormones?

Phthalates are known endocrine disruptors, meaning they throw off our hormonal balance and can cause serious health problems.

And we want functioning hormones. Everything we are is built on our hormones: testosterone in men, estrogen and progesterone in women.

Phthalates, found in perfumes, can penetrate the human body through the skin or by inhalation.

These chemicals are very persistent. They stay inside the body and slowly accumulate in fatty tissue, which down the road can produce severe, long-term chronic diseases.

Most of our exposure to this substance comes from consuming food packaged in plastic, from breathing it in, and through skin contact.

In biomonitoring surveys (monitoring of blood, urine, or other bodily fluids) of a representative sample of the general population in the United States, metabolites (breakdown products) of various types of phthalates were found in the urine of more than 95% of those tested. More recently, biomonitoring survey findings were published from 250 adults, conducted by a national health ministry.

The findings show that in more than 98% of the people in the sample, concentrations were found of 10 out of 11 types of phthalate metabolites, and in 92% all 11 metabolites tested for were found.

Phthalates may be present in a wide range of products:

• Personal care and cosmetic products
• Perfume
• Shampoo
• "Protective" sunscreen
• Nail polish
• Sanitary pads
• Hairspray
• Eyeshadow
• Liquid soap
• Moisturizer
• Cleaning products
• Milk and spice packaging
• Fast food
• Processed food packaging
• Pesticides

The real effects.

According to research, exposure to phthalates affects the reproductive system and causes health effects such as: disruption of the development of the male reproductive system, disruption of the normal function of the hormonal system, birth defects in the reproductive system and genitals, lower testosterone levels during puberty, early puberty in females, low sperm count in adults, low birth weight, and premature birth.

Over the past decade, studies began to be published that everyone should know about.

A study published that phthalates are substances that may be carcinogenic to humans. Especially in organs with many estrogen receptors, like breast cancer.

A February 2021 study in the journal AJPH, from the TENDR project, concluded that exposure to ortho-phthalates may harm brain development and increase children's risk of learning, attention, and focus disorders (including hyperactivity, aggression/defiance, and emotional reactivity).

It was found that phthalates may affect sexual development in humans and impact both male fertility/testosterone levels and female fertility/uterine fibroids.

In a study published in the June 2021 edition of the journal Human Reproduction, researchers tried to understand exactly how phthalates affect a woman's fertility. The study was an international collaboration of researchers from major medical centers and from Harvard and Columbia universities in the U.S.

Microbiome, phthalates, and "per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances" (PFAS).

There is preliminary evidence that exposure to phthalates may also affect brain development in humans.

The populations most sensitive to phthalate exposure are pregnant women, infants and children under the age of 3, and the chronically ill.

A January 2020 study published in the medical journal Environment International found that exposure to phthalates during pregnancy gives the newborn an increased risk of fine motor problems (fine motor scores).

Researchers at the University of Illinois are tracking the effects of hormone-disrupting chemicals (PFAS) on children's physical and behavioral development from birth through childhood. They published a paper in the May 2021 edition of the journal Neurotoxicology. They found evidence linking pregnant women's exposure to phthalates to altered cognitive outcomes in their infants. Prenatal phthalate exposure was linked to slower information processing and may impair recognition ability tied to prior memory.

In a study published in July 2022 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, researchers examined the link between phthalates and premature births. The data was gathered from 16 studies conducted across the United States. The researchers found that women with higher concentrations of several phthalate metabolites in their urine are more likely to deliver their babies prematurely, meaning to give birth three or more weeks before the mother's due date.

Exposure to four of the 11 phthalates found in pregnant women is linked to a 14-16% greater likelihood of premature birth. The most consistent findings were for exposure to a phthalate commonly used in personal care products like nail polish and cosmetics.

Great, we're awake. Now what do we do?

A moment before we talk about solutions, let's talk for a second about the idea of perfuming ourselves.

What should we do? Give up perfume? What if I allow myself to bring out my real, biological scent?

In episode 64 of the podcast, I spoke with a professor about how to attract the right partner. We talked about how important our natural scent is in finding the right person for us, meaning the harder we try to hide or alter our scent, the more we sabotage our chances of finding the right partner. Personally, I love smelling people's natural scents. That doesn't mean I don't wear deodorant or that I'm suggesting we skip deodorant, but there's a meaningful difference between preventing unpleasant body odor and covering yourself in a new scent.

Natural scent.

I'm no hippie, but in most cases when there's someone around me giving off a strong perfume smell, it repels me. I hear the same thing from men about women and from women about men. It's one of those things you only notice how significant they are once you stop them.

Like every other consumer product, we were convinced to use it because they preyed on our insecurity.

We were born with a natural scent, and we don't need help if it isn't from nature.

I know change isn't simple, and there are things everybody does, but maybe it's time to start paying attention to every product we use, especially if we're rubbing it onto our skin, onto our bodies, no matter how prettily it was marketed to us in beautiful packaging with big promises.

There's no shortage of products on the market that are free of industrial chemicals and still amazing. I use natural deodorant, natural soap, the cleaning products in my home are made from natural ingredients, and so is the laundry detergent. If I used sunscreen it would be natural too, and there are perfumes made from natural ingredients.

You can find everything in natural health stores, online, and on iHerb.

And most important of all,

read your ingredient lists!