Don’t take our word for it. Here’s every fact on this site, with its evidence grade, its caveats, and a link to the source, so you can check us.
We start you on the strong ones: findings that have been replicated or come from one large, well-controlled study. Moderate and weak facts are here too, labeled for what they are. Use “Link to this fact” to share a single card.
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
In 101 Dutch teenagers aged 13-15, urinary BPA, BPF and BPS were not linked to attention or parent-rated ADHD-like behavior after adjustment; only a crude trend for BPS and poorer sustained attention disappeared.
Weak evidence: Small, single spot urine, no multiplicity correction; a null in one cohort does not show safety. Bisphenols are not fragrance ingredients.
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
In the same teenagers, higher urinary methylparaben and ethylparaben and detectable butylparaben went with better parent-rated attention and less hyperactivity, the opposite of what concern about parabens would predict.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Cross-sectional, about 125 tests per model with no correction, p up to .10 called marginal; ethylparaben flipped to higher hyperactivity (B 2.43, n=15) after adjusting for school-age scores. Parabens are not fragrance ingredients.
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
Propylparaben showed only one marginal link in these teenagers, with poorer sustained auditory attention in girls, and its confidence interval touched zero (0.444, -0.009 to 0.896).
Weak evidence: One marginal result among many tests; the authors' wording that propylparaben may increase ADHD-like symptoms goes beyond it.
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
The authors of a 2024 commentary on the 2022 US children's health survey say the rise in ADHD diagnoses may reflect more awareness, pandemic schooling demands, disrupted assessment and telehealth access, and they could not say whether any is a true increase.
Weak evidence: Speculative expert opinion; none of the explanations was tested; no environmental cause proposed.
Source: Chronis-Tuscano 2024, Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
In a Taiwanese cohort of 446 children aged 6 to 8, urinary methyl-, ethyl-, propyl- and butylparaben showed no strong overall link with attention-test (K-CPT 2) scores, singly or as a mixture.
Weak evidence: Cross-sectional, one spot urine, single cohort; a null here does not show safety and parabens are preservatives, not fragrance ingredients.
Source: Tung 2024, Environment International Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
In the same cohort, girls (not boys) with higher urinary propyl paraben had higher K-CPT 2 detectability and commission scores in crude models (about 0.9 points per log unit); the adjusted estimates have confidence intervals touching zero.
Weak evidence: Among about 120 uncorrected estimates, sex-stratified without an interaction test, and the paper does not state which score direction is worse.
Source: Tung 2024, Environment International Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
A mixture of 11 phthalate, paraben and phenol markers measured in infant urine showed no significant association with any early-learning score (quantile g-computation).
Weak evidence: N of about 106-124; the authors note only a nonsignificant trend toward lower receptive language.
Source: Sotelo-Orozco 2024, International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
Infant urinary phthalates, parabens, phenols and BPA at 3 to 6 months did not predict a later ASD or non-typical-development classification; the few significant results (DEHTP, methylparaben, BPA, MCNP) were protective.
Weak evidence: Small, enriched-risk sample with wide intervals; null results do not rule out effects.
Source: Sotelo-Orozco 2024, International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
Methylparaben and propylparaben in infant urine fell significantly between 2008 and 2019, and higher methylparaben went with slightly better fine-motor and composite early-learning scores.
Weak evidence: Parabens are preservatives, not fragrance ingredients; nominal result in a small cohort.
Source: Sotelo-Orozco 2024, International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
In that cohort, women in the higher quartiles of urinary MEP had slightly higher serum thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and total T3 than women in the lowest quartile (for example, TSH beta 0.0784, 95% CI 0.0432-0.1135 at the third quartile; TT3 beta 0.0289, 0.0111-0.0467), with free T4 about 2.2% higher in the top quartile.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Association only; small shifts, mostly within normal ranges; headline model excluded abnormal thyroid readings after the fact; no mixture model; one cohort; MEP is a product-use marker, not proof DEP or fragrance acted.
Source: Al-Saleh 2024, International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
The same Saudi pregnancy cohort found higher TSH, free T4 and TSH/FT4 ratio with higher DEHP, dibutyl phthalate and combined phthalate quartiles, with the associations stronger in the second and third trimesters than the first; the direction was upward, not the 'lowering T4 and T3' described in some reviews.
Weak evidence: Effects are a few percent; one cohort; trimester-stratified numbers are in supplementary tables; DEHP and DBP results are not fragrance findings.
Source: Al-Saleh 2024, International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
The review says CO2 above 1,000 ppm was linked to a 20% drop in cognitive test scores and that 600 ppm improved decision-making by 50%, but these come from adult and office experiments and are cited to references (a CO2 meta-analysis, an office-building study) that are not school trials.
Weak evidence: Presents small adult crossover findings as school findings; a larger randomized null exists; pure CO2 and ventilation/VOC effects are different claims.
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
In a Boston fertility-clinic cohort, fathers' urinary methylparaben and propylparaben before conception went with higher parent-reported internalizing (anxiety/depression-type) behavior scores in their 6-13-year-old children (about 2 T-points per natural-log unit).
Weak evidence: One small cohort, 62% IVF, parent-reported outcomes, single paternal urine per father, 54 uncorrected tests; association only; parabens are not fragrance ingredients.
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
The same study found no link between mothers' urinary parabens before or during pregnancy and children's behavior at ages 6-13, singly or as a three-paraben mixture.
Weak evidence: Modest sample (140 mothers, about 30% of eligible families), 2-3 urines averaged; a null here does not prove safety.
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
The authors suggest the preconception window, especially the father's, may be a period of vulnerability for child behavior, but the mechanism (sperm epigenetics) was not measured and the result needs replication.
Weak evidence: Hypothesis only; no replication; paternal parabens may mark shared household product use.
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
In 310 Illinois mother-infant pairs, higher paraben levels (cosmetic and food preservatives) in urine pooled across pregnancy were associated with small, mixed differences in 7.5-month-olds' eye-tracked attention, processing speed and recognition memory, better on some measures and worse on others, and differing by sex.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Small, white, college-educated cohort; most confidence intervals touch zero; no multiplicity correction; directions differ between single-paraben and mixture models. Association only; parabens are not fragrance ingredients.
Source: Cragoe 2026, Environmental Epidemiology Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
Higher ethylparaben in pregnancy urine went with opposite attention changes by infant sex at 7.5 months: shorter time to familiarization (better attention) in girls and longer (poorer) in boys.
Weak evidence: Both intervals touch zero; ethylparaben was detected in only 53% of women; sex interaction screened at P<0.10 among many tests; one cohort.
Source: Cragoe 2026, Environmental Epidemiology Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
A three-paraben mixture in pregnancy urine was associated with better visual recognition memory and faster gaze shifting in 7.5-month-old boys but not girls, though also with slower run duration whose interval includes zero.
Weak evidence: Lower bounds at or near zero; female mixture estimates all null; opposes the single-paraben pattern in the same data; authors themselves call interpretation difficult.
Source: Cragoe 2026, Environmental Epidemiology Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
A 2026 systematic review of 127 studies called the link between early-life exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (phthalates, BPA, pesticides, PBDEs) and ADHD 'consistent', but it did no meta-analysis, gave no effect sizes or per-chemical grades, and says causality is not established.
Weak evidence: Ungraded wording; the EPA systematic review grades phthalate-ADHD/behavior evidence slight or indeterminate for most pairs; Table 1 details do not all match the primaries.
Source: Wu 2026, Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
In a 2026 mouse study, pregnant mice that breathed the emissions of a formaldehyde-free wall paint for 3 hours a day (about 0.68 ppm, above typical indoor levels) had offspring with poorer recognition and spatial memory and fewer synapse markers in the brain. This is animal evidence, not a human finding.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Mouse model; n = 6 per group for behavior (4 dams) and n = 3 for histology/Western; one paint, no conventional-paint comparator; morning-air control vs afternoon-paint exposure; dose above typical indoor levels per the authors.
Source: Sun 2026, Journal of Hazardous Materials Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
The mouse offspring of paint-exposed dams showed suppressed brain retinol-metabolism genes (Aldh1a2, Crabp2) and protein at 5 weeks, which the authors propose as a mechanism; retinoic acid was neither measured nor given back to test it.
Weak evidence: Association only (bulk RNA-seq, n = 3 per group); no rescue, no RA quantification.
Source: Sun 2026, Journal of Hazardous Materials Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
In the same sibling design, smoking in pregnancy was still associated with lower birth weight, so the null behavior results are not just a design that cannot detect any prenatal smoking effect.
Weak evidence: Numbers for the birth-weight check are not reported in the paper; only a one-sentence statement.
Source: D'Onofrio 2008, Development and Psychopathology Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
The authors' genetic analysis found no genetic contribution to smoking in pregnancy among adult sisters and attributed the confounding to shared family environment, but this rests on only 31 cousin and 16 half-sibling pairs and conflicts with larger studies, so it cannot rule out inherited factors.
Weak evidence: Small kinship groups; the 2009 assisted-conception study (Thapar) points to inherited confounding instead. Heritability statements are not exposure findings.
Source: D'Onofrio 2008, Development and Psychopathology Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
For child ADHD, the review reads twin and children-of-twins studies as showing an independent effect of smoking in pregnancy even after genetic and family controls, which the later assisted-conception study of Thapar 2009 questioned.
Weak evidence: Genetic risk in twin models is inferred statistically, not removed; the review's own Table 2 summarizes one twin study as no ADHD effect once covariates were included.
Source: Knopik 2009, Developmental Neuropsychology Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
Tobacco smoke exposes a fetus to a mixture including carbon monoxide, ammonia, nitrogen oxides and metals, so animal nicotine findings cannot be assigned to nicotine alone in people; tobacco smoke is not a fragrance ingredient.
Weak evidence: Animal findings (rats, mice, guinea pigs) are not human evidence; no fragrance exposure studied.
Source: Knopik 2009, Developmental Neuropsychology Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
Classroom noise (median 38 dB, IQR 7.6 dB) went with higher teacher-rated ADHD symptoms in the same Barcelona children, about 22-29% higher score per interquartile range, but not with the parent-rated behavior score.
Weak evidence: Cross-sectional; noise from one classroom per school; association, not diagnosis or causation; noise is not fragrance-related.
Source: Forns 2016, Environmental Health Perspectives Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
Rating-scale studies of preterm-born children show large but highly inconsistent elevations in inattention and hyperactivity (pooled standardized differences about 1.3 and 0.7, I2 95-97%) and a moderate elevation in combined symptoms (about 0.55).
Weak evidence: Heterogeneity is extreme and driven by a few outlier studies; publication bias detected for combined symptoms; not fragrance-related.
Children and pregnancy / Review of other studies
The same EPA meta-analysis pooled phthalate and plasticizer studies (5 studies, 10 compounds including BPA) and reported an odds ratio of about 3.3 for ADHD in children, with I2 of 98%.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Lumps phthalates with BPA, crude ORs, very serious imprecision by the authors' own rating, cross-sectional designs; EPA's graded phthalate review (Radke 2020) rates individual phthalate-ADHD evidence slight or indeterminate; no fragrance phthalate analyzed separately.
Source: Nilsen and Tulve 2020, Environmental Research Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
In the one human dose-response trial of tartrazine (Yellow 5; Rowe and Rowe 1994, 54 children), reactor children responded from 2 mg per day; OEHHA's text treats 1 mg as the no-effect dose, about 0.04 mg/kg/day for a 7-year-old and more than 100 times below the 5 mg/kg/day ADI, but its Table 7 labels the same dose a LOAEL (C712).
Weak evidence: Single trial (Rowe and Rowe 1994, 54 children); the paper labels the same dose a NOAEL in text and a LOAEL in Table 7.
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
A 2024 review of 25 observational studies pooled results for outdoor air pollution and childhood ADHD and reported odds ratios of about 1.8 for PM2.5 (3 studies), 1.4 for PM10 (5 studies) and 1.1 for NO2 (5 studies), with the NO2 lower bound at 1.01.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Very small pools mixing unlike exposure increments and some non-ADHD outcomes; significance tests were run against zero; no publication-bias test, no familial-confounding analysis. Air pollution is not fragrance-related.
Source: Ahmad 2024, Cureus Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
In the 2024 review's NO2 pool, one input (Fuertes, OR 1.11) matches the PM2.5 value in the review's own Table 3, and re-pooling without it gives about 1.14 (0.93-1.40), so the NO2 'significant association' depends on one uncertain input.
Weak evidence: Recomputed by our evidence base from printed intervals; the Fuertes primary is not in our evidence base, so a data-entry swap is flagged, not confirmed. Not fragrance-related.
Source: Ahmad 2024, Cureus Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
Individual studies in the 2024 review disagree: large registry cohorts in Taiwan, Denmark and Korea report higher ADHD diagnosis with higher PM2.5, PM10 or NO2, while the UK, Canadian NO2, Swedish twin and Dutch cohorts found no association.
Weak evidence: Exposure contrasts differ (per 1, 5, 10 µg/m3, per IQR, quartiles); none used sibling or discordant-exposure designs. Association only; not fragrance-related.
Source: Ahmad 2024, Cureus Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
The authors calculated that a baby breathing the 3-hour room air all day would take in about 45 micrograms of limonene per kilogram per day with water-grown plants versus about 14 for an adult, because babies breathe more air for their weight; hazard quotients were below 1 for every age group.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Modeled with US EPA default breathing rates and weights; no infant was sampled; the 3-hour mean was treated as the whole-day concentration and 100% absorption assumed; the age gradient is arithmetic, not a finding about infants.
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
In the same NHANES analysis, children with parent-reported ADHD had higher serum cotinine (median 0.24 vs 0.08 ng/mL), and log-cotinine was associated with ADHD (adjusted OR 1.76, 95% CI 1.18-2.63) in the 5,819 children with cotinine data.
Weak evidence: Single spot cotinine measured at survey, not exposure at diagnosis; per-log-unit estimate, not a graded dose-response; supplementary results not peer reviewed.
Source: Bao 2026 (NHANES 1999-2004), Tobacco Induced Diseases Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
In a Brazilian clinic sample of 48 children born before 35 weeks (mean age 7.9), about two thirds (32 of 48) had atypical parent-reported sensory profiles on the Sensory Profile-2, and 28 of those 32 were children with ADHD.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Single-center cross-sectional, 38 ADHD vs 10 non-ADHD, no term-born controls, 79% ADHD rate shows referral selection; parent report; a Fisher test on 28/38 vs 4/10 (computed here, not in the paper) gives p about 0.06.
Source: Nunes 2026, Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences Reports Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
Among preterm children, those with ADHD scored higher than those without on the Auditory section (p = 0.002), Attention section (p = 0.01), Sensitivity quadrant (p = 0.03) and Conduct section (p = 0.05); the other nine quadrants and sections did not differ.
Weak evidence: About 13 uncorrected comparisons in 10 vs 38 children; the authors call them exploratory; only Auditory passes a simple Bonferroni threshold (0.05/13).
Source: Nunes 2026, Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences Reports Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
Needing a breathing tube in the newborn period went with more atypical Movement (OR 7.33, 95% CI 1.15-46.66) and Social Emotional (OR 4.84, 95% CI 1.05-22.31) sensory scores at school age in this small preterm sample.
Weak evidence: 13 intubated of 48; very wide confidence intervals, exploratory, many tests; authors say it likely reflects overall neonatal illness severity, not a specific effect.
Source: Nunes 2026, Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences Reports Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
The Sensory Profile-2 Oral section (where taste and smell-related behavior would fall) did not differ between preterm children with and without ADHD (mean raw score 15.8 vs 15.6); the paper has no separate smell or taste measure.
Weak evidence: Tiny non-ADHD group (n=10) with low power; the Oral section's content is from the instrument manual, not stated in the paper.
Source: Nunes 2026, Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences Reports Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
In a Spanish school cohort of 1,925 children aged 10-11, higher estimated outdoor NO2 around the mother's home during pregnancy went with slightly higher teacher-rated ADHD-symptom scores (about 1 T-score point per 10 µg/m3), but air pollution showed no association with a clinical ADHD diagnosis of any type.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Single cross-sectional cohort; modeled address-level exposure back-extrapolated from 2009 sampling; small effect that the authors call of limited clinical relevance; teacher-report models not adjusted for parental ADHD. Air pollution is not a fragrance exposure.
Source: Kaur 2026, Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
Within the same cohort, the first- and second-trimester NO2 and particle associations with clinician-rated inattention severity lost statistical significance once the parents' own ADHD symptoms were adjusted for, which the abstract does not report.
Weak evidence: Parental ASRS self-report is a weak familial control, not a sibling design; the trimester windows are highly correlated; multiple-comparison correction used 4 effective tests.
Source: Kaur 2026, Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
The Spanish cohort's inattention associations with prenatal NO2 and NOx appeared in boys (about 0.11-0.13 points per 10-20 µg/m3) but not girls, though no test of a sex difference was reported.
Weak evidence: Significant in one stratum is not a tested interaction; models a-c only.
Source: Kaur 2026, Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
In 16,335 US children from 55 ECHO cohorts, those whose mothers smoked at any point in pregnancy (10.17%) had modestly higher parent-reported overall behavior-problem severity at every age from 1 to 18, and a tilt toward externalizing rather than internalizing problems in most age bins.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Cross-sectional, binary recalled smoking, no sibling or genetic design; the authors say the effects are probably inflated by familial confounding and are not causal estimates. Tobacco smoke is not a fragrance ingredient.
Source: Marceau 2026 (ECHO), Development and Psychopathology Link to this fact
Children and pregnancy / Other evidence
The same ECHO analysis found little evidence that the prenatal-smoking association differs by child sex or age: only 1 of 9 sex tests per score was significant (age 13-14, stronger in boys).
Weak evidence: Authors could not show CBCL measurement invariance across age or sex, so differences or their absence may be measurement artifacts; older bins are small (n = 239 at 17-18).
Source: Marceau 2026 (ECHO), Development and Psychopathology Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Review of other studies
A 2022 review of 37 studies found that phthalates, parabens, aldehydes, and aluminum salts are the contaminants most often reported in perfumes, colognes, and related scented products.
Weak evidence: Non-quantitative review with factual slips; cite primary studies for numbers.
Source: Kazemi 2022, Journal of Environmental Health Science and Engineering Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Measured in people or real products
Pine-scent chemicals were also common in Korean household products: alpha-pinene from 19% and beta-myrcene from 12%.
Weak evidence: Headspace presence only; high detection threshold.
Source: Kwon 2007, Journal of Hazardous Materials Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Hypothesis
Immigrant women in the US most often work as house cleaners and make up 71% of manicurists; an expert job-exposure tool rates both jobs as probably exposed to fragrance chemicals, and house cleaning also to cleaning-product ingredients such as alkylphenols and antimicrobials.
Weak evidence: Exposure ratings from job descriptions (WORC), not measurements.
Source: Knox 2026, Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Measured in people or real products
The same perfume does not come off the skin the same way every day: in women not on the pill, a fixed dose of vanilla on the forearm was rated about 3 times stronger on cycle day 22 than during menstruation.
Weak evidence: 18 women (9 per group), 25 male raters, no hormone confirmation, no unperfumed control, no statistics printed, storage time unreported.
Source: Chróst 2021, Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Measured in people or real products
In a mannequin-head test of 16 UK day face moisturizers, the authors report that one application (0.45 g) delivered on average about 16 times more limonene-type terpenes than 24 hours of typical UK home air, and, for the 7 products whose ethanol reached the nose, about 340 times more ethanol.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Primary: Yeoman 2022 (Indoor Air 32:e12948), Table 6. The abstract's 'up to' is wrong: ×16 and ×339 are means over products with a nonzero dose (14/16, 7/16); maxima ×37 and ×804; over all 16 the medians are ×9 and ×0. Absolute doses are small (≤1.2 mg limonene; below UK PHE limits). The paper's own breathing-zone traces (Fig. 2, limonene ≤0.16 mg/m³) imply doses ~15–500× lower than its tables (evidence base arithmetic), so the ratios are unverified. No people; unheated head, lab at 5 ACH; 'limonene' = all monoterpenes.
Source: Yeoman 2022 via Rádis-Baptista 2023, Journal of Xenobiotics Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Review of other studies
An NGO analysis (Plastic Soup Foundation, 2022) reported that 87% of products from major European cosmetic brands contained microplastic ingredients.
Weak evidence: NGO figure, unreferenced in the review, definition not stated; major European brands only.
Fragrance is everywhere / Measured in people or real products
In the same 33 breastfeeding women, urinary MEP (the metabolite of DEP, the fragrance phthalate) was on average about 57 times higher in women who "often" used nail polish than in women who never did (2,874 vs. 50.5 micrograms per liter).
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Small pilot study (n=33); frequency-group sizes not reported; perfume/cologne use was not asked about, so fragrance products cannot be separated from nail polish as a source; the difference was significant only on untransformed means, and the authors themselves suggest nail-polish users may also use more perfume and other DEP-containing products.
Source: Hines 2009, Environmental Health Perspectives Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Self-reported survey
Among Atlanta-area adults who reported chemical hypersensitivity, symptom onset was reported before age 20 in about a third of cases (32.4%), suggesting hypersensitivity is not exclusively an adult-onset condition.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Retrospective self-report of childhood/adolescent onset in adults; no pediatric clinical verification; age-of-onset table has an internal mismatch with the running text for the older age brackets (see the page's Notes).
Source: Caress & Steinemann 2003 (EHP), Environmental Health Perspectives Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Journalism
An EHP news report on a small Seattle-area study found that scented laundry detergent and dryer sheets sent volatile organic compounds, including several classified by EPA as hazardous air pollutants, out through home dryer vents into outdoor air.
Weak evidence: Secondary news coverage of one small two-home study with no replicates; numbers cross-checked and match the primary study (Steinemann 2013) exactly.
Source: Kessler 2011 (EHP Forum), Environmental Health Perspectives Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Review of other studies
Deodorants alone are estimated to deliver roughly 1,000 metric tons of fragrance per year to the German population, based on standard daily-dose, dermal-retention, and perfume-content assumptions.
Weak evidence: A calculated estimate from published dose and market-size figures, not a measured total; depends on assumed 1% dermal retention and 3-5% perfume content.
Source: Klaschka 2012, International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Measured in people or real products
In this study, fibers from ordinary household laundry outnumbered the deliberately added test-blanket fibers in outdoor snow samples at both homes — suggesting day-to-day laundry drying sheds more microfiber than a single garment alone.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
These 'other' fibers were identified only by visual shape and color under a microscope, not confirmed as textile fiber or identified chemically (no FTIR/Raman); their true source was not verified.
Source: Kapp & Miller 2020, PLOS ONE Industry-funded Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Review of other studies
Airborne nano- and microplastic concentrations measured in prior studies range from about 50 nanograms per cubic meter to 47 micrograms per cubic meter depending on location, illustrating how variable ambient exposure can be, though this paper does not connect that airborne range quantitatively to the topical doses it actually tested on skin.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
This figure is cited by Song et al. 2024 from earlier atmospheric-measurement studies (their refs 39-42), not measured by this paper itself, and the paper does not attempt to translate an airborne concentration into an equivalent skin dose.
Source: Song et al. 2024, Journal of Hazardous Materials Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Other evidence
How much solvent clothes give off depends strongly on the fabric: in screening, acetate held about 740 mg per square meter and released for a half-life of about 77 h, while cotton, linen, and polyester/cotton held about 2-8 mg per square meter with half-lives of about 3-9 h.
Weak evidence: Screening: one short test per fabric with only two or three data points; the authors say to use it only qualitatively; one dry cleaner.
Source: Tichenor 1990, Atmospheric Environment. Part A. General Topics Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Other evidence
About 65 percent of 500 randomly called Hong Kong households (323) said they had a dry-cleaning habit, and 93 percent of them keep the clothes in a wardrobe; 44 percent leave the cleaner's plastic bag on until they wear the item.
Weak evidence: Self-report, 1996 Hong Kong, random phone-book sample; not a measure of exposure.
Source: Chao 1998, Building and Environment Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Other evidence
Dry-cleaned acetate still held about 680 ug/g (roughly 0.07% by weight) of PCE on average after pressing, so some solvent leaves the shop with the garment.
Weak evidence: Acetate has about fiftyfold the residual of a typical mixed load, so this overstates most garments; measured at shop pickup, not at the customer's home.
Source: Brand 1999, Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Other evidence
Flavor chemicals are added to foods at ppm levels and are largely volatile, with up to 80% lost on heating for some; the authors say most are simple chemicals also found naturally in food, but this does not address exposure from non-food sources.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Industry description with a cited loss figure of 'as much as 80%' for some volatiles; no exposure data for non-food uses. Written by two FEMA employees and supported by FEMA (the flavor industry trade association); it is the industry's own account of its own program.
Source: Hallagan 2009, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Other evidence
Two dry cleaners that advertised themselves as green left no detectable PCE in any of four fabrics in a 2011 Georgetown test, unlike the five PCE shops.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Only two shops, one jacket each; shop D's solvent was not identified (the authors infer supercritical CO2) and shop G showed an alkane-type peak, so 'green' solvents were not shown safe, only PCE-free.
Source: Sherlach 2011, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Link to this fact
Information, not medical advice. See also: myths we won’t tell you.