Every fact on this site, with its evidence grade, its caveats, and a link to the source.
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.
Hidden ingredients / Review of other studies
The industry's own safety panel wrote that a single fragrance can contain 50-300 ingredients, that formulas are 'carefully guarded', and that the industry 'is often perceived as rather less than forthcoming by consumers and their physicians'.
Strong evidence: Direct quotation from an industry-authored 2003 paper; 50-300 is a range, not a measured count.
Source: Bickers 2003 (RIFM Expert Panel), Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Industry-funded Link to this fact
Hidden ingredients / Advocacy group testing
Ingredient labels cannot show what is inside 'parfum': a 2010 Canadian cosmetics survey had to leave out diethyl phthalate, a common fragrance solvent, because 'short of a laboratory analysis, there's no way to know'.
Strong evidence: Illustrative quote; for measured prevalence cite Dodson 2012 (DEP in 21/42 conventional composites, no label listed a phthalate).
Hidden ingredients / Government agency
US cosmetic labels can still say just "fragrance". The 2022 law requires companies to name fragrance allergens on the label, but only the ones the FDA lists in a regulation, which the law told the FDA to propose by June 2024.
Strong evidence: Statute §609(b); allergens, number, and thresholds left to FDA; check whether the final rule is in force before saying labels carry them.
Source: MoCRA 2022 Link to this fact
Hidden ingredients / Government agency
Even the FDA can only ask what is in a cosmetic's fragrance after a serious adverse event it has reason to blame on the fragrance; the company may answer with "categories of ingredients", and the answer is exempt from public-records requests.
Strong evidence: Statute §605(f); 30-day deadline; records access separately excludes formulas (§610).
Source: MoCRA 2022 Link to this fact
Hidden ingredients / Review of other studies
About 1 in 10 (370 of 3,820) topical medicines in a Belgian survey were labeled as containing a fragrance ingredient, and there is no EU or Belgian legislation restricting fragrance in topical medicines.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Now sourced directly from the primary (Nardelli 2009), not second-hand via Pastor-Nieto 2021; exact figures confirmed (370/3,820 = 9.7%, rounds to the paper's stated 10%). This is a label survey (fragrance listed as an ingredient), not a reaction-rate or chemical-analysis figure; 127 of the clinic's 3,378 iatrogenic-ACD patients (3.8%) had a confirmed reaction to one of the fragranced products. Nardelli 2009's own abstract misprints the product-count denominator as 3,280 — use 3,820 from its Methods/body.
Source: Pastor-Nieto 2021 (Nardelli 2009), Current Treatment Options in Allergy Link to this fact
Hidden ingredients / Measured in people or real products
Unlisted PFAS impurities (perfluorocarboxylic acids, including chain lengths that overlap PFOA) were found in nearly every PFAS-containing cosmetic tested in a 2024 study, and these unlisted impurities transferred into artificial sweat far more readily (43-76%) than the PFAS ingredient actually printed on the label (which showed negligible transfer).
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Bioaccessibility (partitioning into artificial sweat) is a precursor to, not proof of, skin absorption; sebum was not included in the assay and may raise this further; small sample; no PTFE-containing products were tested.
Source: Namazkar 2024, Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts Link to this fact
Hidden ingredients / Measured in people or real products
In Belgium, about 1 in 10 topical (skin-applied) pharmaceutical products — wound-healing ointments, NSAID gels, antiseptics, antihemorrhoidals, even corticosteroid-antibiotic creams — listed a fragrance ingredient, sometimes disclosed only as the single word "Perfume".
Strong evidence: 370/3,820 products in a Belgian label survey (2009); a label/composition survey, not chemical analysis; historical product list, not a current market snapshot.
Hidden ingredients / Measured in people or real products
A single undisclosed "Perfume" in one antibiotic-corticosteroid cream (Mycolog/Triadcortyl) caused allergic reactions in 34 patients — more than any other product in a 30-year clinic series — and its 28-ingredient composition was only obtained by directly asking the manufacturer, not from the label.
Strong evidence: Single-clinic case series; one product's undisclosed formula, not a general claim about all perfume-labeled products.
Hidden ingredients / Measured in people or real products
Health Canada's own testing of 252 Canadian cosmetic and personal care products found the fragrance solvent DEP in 70% of fragrance products, at levels up to 2.6% by weight, yet every DEP-positive product was labeled only with the generic term "parfum" — never DEP or any phthalate.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
N=252 individually tested products, Canadian market, 2007-08; detection frequency is lower than two smaller earlier surveys (Hubinger & Havery 2006, EWG 2002) found for fragrances specifically.
Source: Koniecki 2011, Environmental Research Link to this fact
Indoor air / Review of other studies
A chemical released indoors is roughly 1,000 times more likely to be breathed in than the same amount released outdoors (exact when comparing the low end of each range; only ~100x at the high end, since the ranges overlap at 10⁻³), so cleaning products and air fresheners (about 1% of California's smog-forming emissions) may deliver an inhaled dose on the same scale as all outdoor sources combined.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Modeled population intake fractions (not measurements), population-average estimate. Traced to the primary source, Lai, Thatcher & Nazaroff 2000 (JAWMA 50:1688-1699), which derives outdoor PITF 10⁻⁶-10⁻³ vs indoor/in-vehicle PITF 10⁻³-10⁻¹ from Gaussian-plume and mass-balance modeling (Nazaroff co-author of both papers, so this is not independent replication). The ranges overlap at 10⁻³, so '1000x' is a floor-to-floor comparison, not a fixed multiplier under all conditions.
Source: Nazaroff & Weschler 2004, Atmospheric Environment Link to this fact
Indoor air / Review of other studies
Scent chemicals such as limonene and pine oil react with ozone indoors to make new pollutants, including formaldehyde and fine particles, that keep forming for hours after cleaning ends.
Strong evidence: Size of the effect depends on dose and indoor ozone; confirmed by later chamber and field studies.
Source: Nazaroff & Weschler 2004, Atmospheric Environment Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
Limonene was detected in every childcare room studied and was more than 1,000 times higher indoors than outdoors, so it came from products used inside.
Strong evidence: Outdoor detected in 1/20 sites.
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
Questionnaires about habits and routines correctly sorted only 20% of people by their measured exposure to cleaning and fragrance chemicals, vs 61% for traffic fumes; exposure depends on individual behavior and product choice.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
'Product choice' is the authors' explanation, not directly tested in this paper; independently corroborated by a larger, more direct 2021 UK study (Heeley-Hill 2021, 60 homes, daily diary-logged — not recalled — product-use frequency vs measured concentrations) that found cumulative product-use frequency has essentially no predictive power for measured indoor VOC concentrations (R²<0.001 for total VOC; no individual VOC significant).
Source: Edwards 2006, Atmospheric Environment Industry-funded Link to this fact
Indoor air / Review of other studies
Scent chemicals released by perfumes and scented products can react with ozone in indoor air to form new pollutants, including formaldehyde and fine particles.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Formation is well established (Fiedler 2005: 40 ppb O3 + a limonene/alpha-pinene-containing VOC mix -> HCHO 13 -> 40 µg/m³, UFP 2,500 -> 46,000 cm-3; Singer 2006; Rossignol 2013; Destaillats 2006 gives the underlying per-ozone yield). Amounts depend on dose and ozone; the harm at real indoor levels is not shown. A far more rigorous, independent toxicologist review (Wolkoff & Nielsen 2017) reaches the same qualitative chemistry conclusion via its own literature synthesis and adds a quantitative caution: in the two largest human tests to date (Fiedler 2005, n=130; Fadeyi 2015, n=71), the resulting reaction mixture caused no significant airway/eye effects, and its own threshold estimate is that >200 µg/m³ ozone at high limonene would be needed before sensory effects are expected. Cite primaries for numbers.
Source: Alblooshi 2025, Frontiers in Toxicology Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
Across decades of US monitoring where people carried personal air samplers, the air they breathed held more of almost every hazardous chemical than outdoor air did: exposure happens indoors, not at the outdoor monitoring station.
Strong evidence: Older studies include smokers' homes; compound-specific.
Source: Weisel 2002, Environmental Health Perspectives Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
Air fresheners, deodorizers, and moth crystals were identified as the household source of p-dichlorobenzene, which reached about 300 µg/m³ indoors while being nearly absent outdoors.
Strong evidence: P-DCB is a deodorizing active, not a fragrance ingredient.
Source: Weisel 2002, Environmental Health Perspectives Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
Formaldehyde in New Jersey homes averaged 55 parts per billion indoors versus 13 outdoors; compared home by home, indoor levels averaged about seven times the outdoor level (mean indoor/outdoor ratio 7.2).
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Regional sample; building materials are a major source alongside products The 7.2 is the mean of per-home ratios, not 55 ÷ 13 (about 4.2); corrected 2026-09-28 after a site-team check.
Source: Weisel 2002, Environmental Health Perspectives Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
For p-dichlorobenzene, an often unlabeled deodorizer in air fresheners and moth repellents, 97% of people's exposure came from sources inside the home, not outdoor air.
Strong evidence: Deodorizer/pesticide active, not a fragrance ingredient.
Source: Wallace 1991, Environmental Health Perspectives Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
In week-long air measurements across 11 European cities, the scent chemicals limonene and alpha-pinene were the compounds most concentrated in homes compared with workplaces (about 4x), attributed to perfumes, cleaning and fragranced products.
Strong evidence: Source attribution by the authors, not measured per product.
Source: Geiss 2011, Atmospheric Environment Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
Limonene was 13x higher indoors than outdoors in European offices and classrooms, one of the two highest indoor/outdoor ratios of 23 chemicals measured.
Strong evidence: Ratio of medians.
Source: Geiss 2011, Atmospheric Environment Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
Most European homes had low limonene (median 9.5 ug/m3 over a week), but the heaviest-use homes reached weekly averages up to 493 ug/m3, the range used in lab studies of indoor ozone chemistry.
Strong evidence: Upper tail only; median home 20-60x below chamber levels.
Source: Geiss 2011, Atmospheric Environment Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
In a real test house, using a limonene-scented foam cleaner exactly as the label directed produced a burst of 45,000-150,000 tiny new particles per cubic centimeter within minutes, but only when ozone was in the air.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
One product, one house; particle number not mass. Independently replicated in a second real building (a working primary school; Morawska 2009), with a different detergent and country, at a similar order of magnitude (5.89-6.85×10^4 cm-3 in controlled tests) and the same water-only-no-burst, ozone-dependent pattern.
Source: Rossignol 2013, Atmospheric Environment Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
Scent-type chemicals typical of fragranced and cleaning products (limonene, pinene, carene) were the signature of home air: close to zero outdoors but tens to hundreds of times higher inside homes.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Small original study (n=7); the indoor-source signature (not the specific product-category attribution) is now independently replicated by a much larger 2021 UK study with real paired outdoor sampling (Heeley-Hill 2021, 60 homes: limonene indoor:outdoor ~19x, alpha-pinene ~10x), though that larger study also found cumulative product-use frequency does not predict concentration (only insecticide/plug-in-air-freshener use showed weak covariance with limonene) — so the indoor-source signature is strong, the specific 'cleaning products' attribution stays inferential. Givaudan-funded (COI); analysis independent.
Source: Gokhale 2008, Science of the Total Environment Link to this fact
Indoor air / Lab study (cells or chemistry)
What you breathe after using a scented cleaner is not only what was in the bottle: the scent chemicals keep reacting in the air to make new compounds.
Strong evidence: Well-established chemistry; magnitude indoors depends on ozone levels.
Indoor air / Review of other studies
Scented cleaners react with ozone indoors and release bursts of tiny new particles; every study able to separate them found this.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Particle number, not mass; magnitude depends on instrument size cutoff and dose. Now confirmed across chamber, real test-house, real-office, and real-classroom settings (Rossignol 2013, Rosales 2022, Wu 2024, Morawska 2009).
Source: Salonen 2024, Environment International Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
In a controlled chamber, the people themselves were the main thing reacting with indoor ozone: four seated adults removed about 60–65% of it, in two separate campaigns with men and with women, and their skin oils turned it into carbonyls such as 4-oxopentanal and 6-MHO. The same DTU chamber's protocol paper independently reproduced the ~60–69% removal in three more groups — teenagers and seniors as well as adults — across 26 experiments, and showed the sink is dermal (a breath-only control lost almost no ozone).
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Same DTU 22.5 m³ chamber and fan setup in all campaigns (Wang 2024: 4 men, ~37 ppb; Zannoni 2021: 2 groups of 2 women + 2 men, ~35 ppb; Bekö 2020: 5 groups — 3 adult, teenagers, seniors — same chamber/fans, ~35 ppb); mixing fans put deposition velocities at the top of the literature range, and a furnished home also loses ozone to surfaces, so the occupant share there will be lower. Chemistry only, no health endpoint; ICHEAR 6-MHO values may be inflated by an inlet artifact.
Source: Wang 2024, Environmental Science & Technology Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
Four people in a clean, well-ventilated test room removed about two-thirds of the ozone coming in, confirmed in a second campaign that included women as well as men.
Strong evidence: Same DTU chamber as Wang 2024; ~65% is evidence base arithmetic from a ~100 ppb target inlet; furnished homes also lose ozone to surfaces.
Source: Zannoni 2021, Environmental Science & Technology Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
When scent chemicals from a pine-oil cleaner, an orange-oil degreaser, and a plug-in air freshener met ozone in a lab chamber, about one formaldehyde molecule formed for every 3-5 ozone molecules they used up (yields of 20-30% in most tests).
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Same three products as Singer 2006, same research group/CARB contract, not independent replication; the highest single value (90%) occurred at air-freshener vapor loads 30-45x a real room's plug-in levels.
Source: Destaillats 2006, Environmental Science & Technology Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
The moment ozone was added to pine-oil, citrus, and air-freshener scent vapors in a lab chamber, a burst of new ultrafine particles formed immediately and grew within minutes into fine particles, reaching hundreds of micrograms per cubic meter.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Bench chamber at cleaning-pulse-scale vapor loads; ultrafine particles were only 1-4% of the mass at steady state, not the 4-16% the paper itself mislabels as an 'ultrafine' yield (that figure is total particle mass, all sizes).
Source: Destaillats 2006, Environmental Science & Technology Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
In a controlled test room, people removed roughly 60–69% of the indoor ozone in every one of five very different groups tested — teenagers, young adults, and people in their 70s alike — showing this is a general property of occupied rooms with ozone present, not a quirk of one age group.
Strong evidence: Chamber study (22.5 m³, DTU, mixing fans push ozone deposition to the top of the literature range), fragrance-free hygiene products only, no health outcome measured.
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
Limonene was the most prevalent and highest-concentration of 88 volatile organic compounds measured in a national survey of Canadian homes: detected in 99% of homes, with an arithmetic mean of about 45 ppb (roughly 250 ug/m3) and a geometric mean of about 25 ppb (roughly 140 ug/m3), levels well above limonene concentrations reported in Australian, European, and Californian indoor-air studies.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
The ppb-to-ug/m3 conversion is evidence base arithmetic (limonene MW 136.23, 25C/1atm), not stated by the authors, who reported concentrations only in ppb. Comparator studies used different sampling durations, locations, and methods, so the size of the gap should be read cautiously even though the direction (Canada higher) is clear.
Source: Dales & Cakmak 2019, Environmental Pollution Industry-funded Link to this fact
Indoor air / Other evidence
The mouse Alarie test (RD50, the airborne concentration that cuts breathing rate in half) predicts the no-effect concentration for irritation in human chamber studies well, with humans about 40 times more sensitive than the RD50 value would suggest.
Strong evidence: Cannot be used alone for a full guide value because the Alarie test only captures sensory irritation, not systemic effects that could occur at lower doses.
Source: Mangelsdorf et al. 2021, Int J Hyg Environ Health, International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health Link to this fact
Indoor air / Measured in people or real products
Tobacco smoke is the largest known source of styrene exposure for smokers, whose blood/exposure levels run roughly 6 times higher than non-smokers'; cigarette smoke has been estimated to contain 0.5-48 micrograms of styrene per cigarette depending on the assessment.
Strong evidence: Range spans an older (WHO 1983, 18-48 ug/cigarette) and a more recent (CDC 2010, 0.5-10 ug/cigarette) assessment using different methods; not a single agreed figure.
Source: IARC 2019 (Vol. 121) Link to this fact
The industry / Lab study (cells or chemistry)
The lab tests that replaced animal testing for setting cosmetic and fragrance allergy safety limits explain only about 62% of how strongly a chemical causes allergy.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Regression R2 against mouse LLNA, not human outcomes; industry-authored. Natsch 2023 (same author) retrains against human-anchored data: the 62% figure survives on a blended human+LLNA composite (63.4%, n=139), but against strictly human data (n=62) accuracy drops to 32-45%, and even the LLNA itself only reaches 43% predicting human potency — so '62%' should not be read as human-relevant accuracy. Api, Basketter & Lalko 2014 (RIFM's own earlier LLNA-vs-human validation, 57 fragrance chemicals) independently corroborates, by a different metric (categorical concordance, not R2) and seven years earlier, that the LLNA itself is an imperfect human proxy: 76% agreement within half an order of magnitude, but up to ~790-fold mispredicted for salicylates and ~26-42-fold for trans-2-hexenal/methyl-2-nonanoate. Roberts & Api 2018 (same fragrance dataset, direct LLNA-vs-human regression) reports a much higher R2=0.784, but only for a 35-chemical subset that already excludes those 14 known outliers a priori — demonstrating that domain-restricted R2 figures like this one can substantially overstate accuracy on unselected chemistry, a caution that applies to curated NAM training/case-study sets generally, not only to this specific figure.
Source: Natsch & Gerberick 2022, ALTEX Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Lab study (cells or chemistry)
Accuracy has not improved: a 2015 model predicted allergy potency about as well as the 2022 one.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Confirmed by reading the 2015 primary directly, not just inferred from one comparison line in the 2022 paper: Natsch 2015 Equation 7 gives R²(adj)=62.3% (Results, not the abstract's rounded 60%), matching 2022's 62% and 2023's 59-65%.
Source: Natsch & Gerberick 2022, ALTEX Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
The cosmetics industry's own safety panel judged PGME 'safe' only for nail products and calculated only skin absorption; it did not estimate how much users or nail-salon workers breathe in, and relied on the smell to limit inhalation.
Strong evidence: Verdict probably right for occasional home users; the weakness is in the reasoning, not a demonstrated harm.
Source: CIR 2008, International Journal of Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
The Cosmetic Ingredient Review is funded by the cosmetics industry trade association, and the use data, exposure survey, and safety-margin calculation behind its 2008 PGME verdict were unpublished industry submissions.
Strong evidence: Much of the underlying toxicology is peer-reviewed; industry funding does not by itself make the conclusion wrong.
Source: CIR 2008, International Journal of Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
The fragrance industry's own standard caps this one ingredient at 0.003% in lip products and 0.02-0.05% in typical leave-on skin products – about 30 parts per million in the strictest category.
Strong evidence: IFRA Standards are voluntary; the limits apply to rose ketones individually or in combination.
Source: Lalko 2007 (RIFM), Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
For this fragrance ingredient there was no data at all on absorption, repeat-dose toxicity, developmental effects, genetic damage, or cancer – the whole safety file is skin testing, and 8 of its 11 studies are unpublished company reports that outsiders cannot check.
Strong evidence: As of the 2006 literature search; later RIFM re-evaluations may have added data.
Source: Lalko 2007 (RIFM), Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
Much of the evidence behind the fragrance industry's 'safe as used' verdict on salicylates is unpublished: about 65 of the cited studies are internal RIFM reports, several submitted by fragrance companies, and no modern cancer bioassay exists for any of the 17 chemicals.
Strong evidence: Counted from the paper's reference list; 'no modern bioassay' means untested, not shown to be carcinogenic.
Source: RIFM Expert Panel / Belsito 2007, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Self-reported survey
The study most often cited to call lavender and tea tree oils 'safe' for children was part-funded by the Australian Tea Tree Industry Association, the Tisserand Institute, and an aromatherapy association, while declaring no conflicts of interest.
Strong evidence: Funding is documented in the paper itself; funders are stated to have had no role. The paper's weakness is its power and design, not only its funding.
Source: Hawkins 2021, International Journal of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
The tea tree oil industry's trade association (ATTIA) challenged the lavender/tea tree case reports in a medical journal, and the same association later helped fund a survey that called the oils safe for children.
Strong evidence: Documents who argued what; says nothing about whether the oils cause breast growth.
Source: Ramsey et al. 2020 (JCEM reply); Hawkins et al. 2021, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism Link to this fact
The industry / Animal study
The two molecules that give lavender oil its scent, linalool and linalyl acetate, were put through the full regulatory endocrine test battery (OECD guideline cell assays plus rat uterotrophic, Hershberger, and one-generation reproductive studies) and came back negative on estrogen and androgen endpoints — in a study written, run, and entirely funded by BASF, the company that manufactures both chemicals, with all five authors BASF employees.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Guideline designs with working positive controls, so the negative is real; the conflict of interest is disclosed in the paper and should be stated whenever the result is cited. Scope: two constituents, not lavender or tea tree oil.
Source: Hareng 2024, Archives of Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Animal study
Nothing in the industry's endocrine testing program covers tea tree oil, whose main constituent, terpinen-4-ol, was never tested.
Strong evidence: A statement about the study's scope, not about tea tree oil's safety either way.
Source: Hareng 2024, Archives of Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
The fragrance industry's safety system is self-run: by its own 2003 description, companies fund the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials through dues, its expert panel reviews ingredient safety, and conclusions go to the industry's trade body IFRA, which sets voluntary standards for those same companies. No regulator appears in the loop.
Strong evidence: Industry's own description (2003); panel members are required to be independent of the industry; later governance changes not covered.
Source: Bickers 2003 (RIFM Expert Panel), Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
By the industry's own figures, about 60% of fragrance goes into soaps, fabric softeners, cleaners, and detergents, yet its 2003 method for estimating people's exposure counted only 10 personal-care products applied to skin, and breathing fragrance in was not part of the calculation.
Strong evidence: Describes the 2003 process; later RIFM aggregate-exposure work may differ. Shows the route was not assessed, not that it causes harm.
Source: Bickers 2003 (RIFM Expert Panel), Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
By 1994 the fragrance industry itself had banned or restricted 82 fragrance materials, most because they cause skin allergy and a dozen because they cause skin reactions in sunlight.
Strong evidence: Counts restrictions, not harm rates; limits not printed.
Source: Ford 1994 (RIFM) Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Government agency
In 2000 the EU's scientific advisers recommended banning 36 fragrance materials from cosmetics, and the list they endorsed was the fragrance industry's own list of materials it had already prohibited (IFRA); the committee added no testing of its own and deferred all industry restrictions to later.
Strong evidence: Describes the 2000 procedure; later EU opinions (SCCS 2012) did independent hazard classification.
Source: SCCNFP 2000 Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
A trade consortium of 11 French essential-oil companies funded and employed the authors of the journal letter disputing the lavender breast-growth case reports; together with the tea tree oil trade association's letter, the published rebuttals to those case reports came from industry.
Strong evidence: Documents who argued what (disclosed in the letter); says nothing about whether the oils cause breast growth.
Source: Giroux & Orjubin 2020 (JCEM letter; Consortium Huiles Essentielles), The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
In 1997 the cosmetics industry's own safety panel (CIR) formally asked for inhalation-toxicity data on benzyl alcohol, benzoic acid, and sodium benzoate, received none, and still published a 2001 "safe" conclusion that explicitly excludes any product where inhalation is a route of exposure (colognes, hairsprays, deodorants, aerosol fixatives).
Strong evidence: The gap is documented in the report's own text (Notice of Insufficient Data, no comments received); no later CIR report closing it was found in this pass.
Source: Nair 2001 (CIR Expert Panel), International Journal of Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Lab study (cells or chemistry)
The lab tests that replaced animal testing for fragrance and cosmetic allergy limits have been stuck at explaining about 62% of allergy potency since 2015 — the 2015 model and the 2022 model perform the same.
Strong evidence: Regression R2(adj) against mouse LLNA potency, not human outcomes; industry-funded (Givaudan).
Source: Natsch 2015, Toxicological Sciences Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Measured in people or real products
The independent dermatologists who ran this study concluded deodorants should contain cinnamal at less than 0.01% to protect people already sensitized, a stricter limit than the fragrance industry's later 0.05% IFRA standard.
Strong evidence: Authors' own recommendation, not a regulatory outcome; the 0.05% IFRA cap was set afterward using the induction NOEL, not this elicitation data.
Source: Bruze et al. 2003, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
The fragrance industry's own risk-assessment methodology (QRA1, then QRA2) has set enforceable safety limits for fragrance materials since 2008, but by its own authors' admission has never been tested against real-world clinical outcomes.
Strong evidence: Industry-authored methodology paper; the paper itself calls for the longitudinal clinical studies that would settle this, and states they have not been done.
Source: Api 2020 (RIFM/IFRA), Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
The industry's fragrance safety-limit system (QRA/IFRA Standards) is explicitly designed to prevent new fragrance allergies from developing, not to protect people who are already allergic from reacting to a compliant product.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Confirmed as the framework's own stated design intent (Section 2.2), not inferred from a single ingredient's numbers; does not itself test whether existing limits provoke reactions in sensitized people.
Source: Api 2020 (RIFM/IFRA), Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
The 2020 update to the industry's fragrance safety-assessment methodology exists because an independent EU regulatory body (the SCCS), not the industry itself, found the original 2008 version's exposure assumptions and safety factors inadequately justified.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Confirmed directly from the SCCS's own primary text, now ingested: SCCS Notes of Guidance, 11th revision (SCCS/1628/21, 2021), §3-4.7.1, p.56 — "The SCCS considers that it is not yet possible to use the QRA2 to establish a concentration at which induction of sensitization of a fragrance is unlikely to occur. Several aspects of the methodology are not clear…".
Source: Api 2020 (RIFM/IFRA), Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Government agency
A population study widely treated in dermatology literature as independent, EU-style evidence that confirmed dermatologists' fragrance-allergy estimates over the industry's own claims was itself funded by the fragrance industry's own research body, the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials (RIFM) — a funding fact omitted by every earlier secondhand citation of this study.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
The industry-funded study still confirmed the higher, consumer-relevant estimate (1.9% clinically relevant, up from a disputed 'up to 2%') over industry's own 2000 'far lower' claim — the funding did not appear to weaken the result in this case.
Source: Diepgen 2015 (EDEN), British Journal of Dermatology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Government agency
The EU guidance that defines what 'free from' and 'hypoallergenic' cosmetic claims are allowed to mean was jointly agreed by the European Commission, all EU/EFTA member states, the main EU cosmetics trade body (Cosmetics Europe) and the fragrance industry's own trade association (IFRA).
Strong evidence: Stated on the document's own cover page (footnote 1); this describes who wrote the guidance, not an independent audit of its content.
Source: EC Technical Document on Cosmetic Claims 2017 Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Government agency
This all-allergen EDEN study, like its fragrance-specific companion paper, was funded by the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials (RIFM), the fragrance industry's own scientific body, with a co-author (M. Bruze) sitting on RIFM's own expert panel.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
The study's own funding statement names RIFM directly; this paper's own headline result (nickel and thiomersal, not fragrance, are the top allergens) has no obvious pro-fragrance-industry stake either way.
Source: Diepgen 2016 (EDEN), British Journal of Dermatology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
This research was supported entirely by the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials, Inc. (RIFM), a fragrance-industry trade body funded by fragrance and consumer-product manufacturers; co-authors are staff of RIFM, Creme Global (RIFM's contract exposure-modeling partner), Unilever, Givaudan, Procter & Gamble and Firmenich.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Fact about funding and authorship, not an independent finding; the paper states "the authors report no conflicts of interest" in the narrow disclosure sense despite full industry funding and staffing.
Source: Safford 2017, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
The candle recipes tested in this study, the criteria for making them, and the study's funding all came from an advisory committee of candle and fragrance industry groups: the European Candle Association, National Candle Association, Latin American Candle Manufacturers Association, and the fragrance houses Arylessence, Belmay, Firmenich, Givaudan, International Flavors & Fragrances, Symrise, and Takasago.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
The authors' Declaration of Competing Interest states no known competing financial interests, alongside this acknowledged industry funding, study design input, and co-author industry affiliations (Arylessence, European Candle Association).
Source: Salthammer 2021, Environment International Industry-funded Link to this fact
Information, not medical advice. See also: myths we won’t tell you.