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.
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
The cosmetics industry's own safety panel (CIR, funded by the Personal Care Products Council) concluded in 2012 that 52 trimonium conditioner and surfactant ingredients, including cetrimonium, steartrimonium and behentrimonium chlorides, are safe as used only 'when formulated to be nonirritating', and set no numeric concentration limit.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Literature review by an industry-funded panel, so this is the industry's own position; about half the 52 ingredients are cleared on read-across with no ingredient-specific data. CIR is financed by the Personal Care Products Council, the cosmetics industry trade association.
Source: Becker et al. 2012 (CIR), Int J Toxicol, International Journal of Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
The fragrance industry's safety assessment of 17 salicylates counted exposure from 10 personal-care product types only. Household cleaners and detergents, which the same report lists as uses, and breathing fragrance in were not included.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
As of 2024, RIFM/Creme Global's aggregate exposure model (Lee 2024) does now cover household care, air care, and inhalation industry-wide, but that 2024 paper does not report salicylate-specific numbers, so it is unconfirmed whether this specific 2007 dossier's gap has since been closed for these 17 materials. A decade after this 2007 dossier, RIFM's own broader exposure model (Comiskey et al. 2017, Phase 2) had still not reached household cleaning or laundry products either — explicitly named as future work — confirming the product-type gap this claim describes persisted within the industry's own more advanced modeling program well past 2007, closing only with Lee 2024 industry-wide (still not salicylate-specific).
Source: RIFM Expert Panel / Belsito 2007, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
As of 2024, the fragrance industry's aggregate exposure model finally covers household-care, air-care, and oral-care products and the inhalation route for its full ~3,000-ingredient inventory — a scope earlier industry safety dossiers from 1994, 2003, and 2007 explicitly left out or dismissed by a single-ingredient calculation.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Whole-inventory average from an industry-run model; the paper does not show that any specific earlier dossier (e.g. the 2007 salicylates group review) was individually re-run through the expanded model, so whether that scope gap has closed for those specific materials is unconfirmed.
Source: Lee 2024 (RIFM/Creme Global), Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
The industry's own model finds fragrance exposure from household-care and air-care products is far lower than from cosmetics and personal-care products, and almost entirely by inhalation rather than skin contact (household 95th percentile 0.2 ug/kg/day, air care 5 ug/kg/day, versus cosmetics/personal care about 50 ug/kg/day, nearly all dermal).
Moderate evidence: Based on a 350-ingredient sample modeled from industry-supplied concentration and use-frequency survey data, not measured breathing-zone concentrations.
Source: Lee 2024 (RIFM/Creme Global), Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Industry source
The fragrance industry's aggregate consumer exposure model did not include any estimate of inhaled fragrance exposure until 2017, when it added an inhalation route for air fresheners, scented candles, and personal-care sprays only — 23 years after the industry's 1994 safety package dismissed inhalation testing.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
This is a modeled inhalation exposure fraction from a compartmental model run at single default parameter values, not measured breathing-zone data; the model's own validation against real chemical concentrations is reported in a companion paper (Safford et al. 2017) not yet in this evidence base.
Source: Comiskey 2017 (RIFM/Creme Global), Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Government agency
California's 2022 law banning intentionally added PFAS in cosmetics (AB 2771), effective January 1, 2025, is expected by state toxicologists' own modeling to reduce PFAS reaching California wastewater treatment plants, particularly from shaving creams and gels, hair care products, and facial cleansers rather than from makeup.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
This is a projection from the same modeled estimate, not a before/after measurement; the ban had not yet taken effect when the paper was published, and DTSC has an institutional interest in the policy it also administers.
Source: Balan 2024, Environmental Science & Technology Link to this fact
The industry / Animal study
A commercial testing laboratory's mouse-bioassay claims of consumer-product toxicity (the same ASTM E-981/FOB method the lab later applied to air fresheners and colognes) failed an independent, blinded EPA/ManTech replication attempt when applied to carpets; the largest toxicity-looking signals traced instead to stress from the restrained-exposure test procedure itself, present even in air-only control animals.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Applies to carpets specifically (2 CPSC-complaint carpets, one lab-replication attempt); the fragrance papers' headline airflow-limitation (mid-expiratory flow) endpoint was never measured by this study, so it is method/lab-level caution about the testing program, not a direct refutation of the fragrance-specific findings.
Source: Tepper et al. 1995, American Industrial Hygiene Association Journal Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
The US fragrance and cosmetics industry's principal safety-review and standard-setting bodies (IFRA, RIFM/REXPAN, the Personal Care Products Council, the Cosmetic Ingredient Review, the Voluntary Cosmetics Regulation Program) are industry-created and industry-funded, and their safety findings are not legally binding on member companies.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Institutional description only, as of 2010-11; does not measure whether member companies actually comply. IFRA's Standards list was described as subscription-only at the time; a separate, later 'IFRA Transparency List' is cited elsewhere in our evidence base as publicly accessible, so 'IFRA's list is not available to the public' should not be repeated without specifying which list.
Source: Reebs 2011 Link to this fact
The industry / Animal study
Unilever toxicologists reviewed 92 public rat inhalation toxicology studies (from US EPA HPV/OECD SIDS reports and BfR, TNO, and ECETOC evaluations) and derived generic inhalation 'thresholds of toxicological concern' (TTCs), so that a consumer aerosol ingredient's measured exposure could be compared to a threshold instead of running a new ingredient-specific inhalation toxicology study.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Single industry research group (Unilever); the TTC framework is a conservative screening tool, not a replacement for chemical-specific testing when structural alerts or existing hazard data raise concern, and it explicitly excludes polymers and several other chemical classes.
Source: Carthew, Clapp & Gutsell 2009, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Animal study
The paper's proposed inhalation systemic TTC ranges from 16.4 μg/kg/day for the least-toxic Cramer Class 1 chemicals down to 2.8 μg/kg/day for the more toxicity-presumptive Class 3 chemicals (roughly a 6-fold spread), while its separate local respiratory-tract TTC ranges from 2.1 to 0.73 μg/g lung tissue/day (about a 3-fold spread) — equivalent to 980/170 μg/day and 1400/470 μg/day respectively for a 60 kg adult.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Derived from the 5th percentile of NOAEC/NOAEL across 92 rat studies plus a 25-fold uncertainty factor; a conservative statistical screening threshold, not a measured no-harm level, and the paper treats local and systemic thresholds as two separate comparisons that later citations sometimes conflate.
Source: Carthew, Clapp & Gutsell 2009, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Animal study
The dataset behind these inhalation TTCs excluded genotoxic carcinogens, in vivo mutagens, heavy metals, dioxins/PCBs, organophosphates, and polymers — chemical classes the authors say would already be disqualified from consumer aerosol use on other safety grounds — before applying a default uncertainty (safety) factor of 25 to the 5th-percentile NOAEC/NOAEL of the remaining 92 rat studies.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Exclusion criteria and the 25-fold uncertainty factor are the authors' own choices, following precedent from the oral/dietary TTC literature; not independently audited by a regulator.
Source: Carthew, Clapp & Gutsell 2009, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Animal study
Only 5 of the 92 chemicals in the database had local (respiratory-tract) NOAECs below the study's own 5th-percentile benchmark — sulfuric acid, trimellitic acid, glutaraldehyde, hydrogen peroxide, and 1,2-dichloro-4-nitrobenzene — and all were strong acids, bases, or reactive irritants that the authors say would already be excluded from consumer aerosol use on physicochemical grounds alone.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
A post-hoc observation about which chemicals happened to fall below the benchmark in this specific 92-study set; not a claim that physicochemical screening alone catches every locally toxic inhalable chemical.
Source: Carthew, Clapp & Gutsell 2009, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Animal study
The paper reports its inhalation-derived systemic TTCs (980 μg/day Class 1, 170 μg/day Class 3, for a 60 kg adult) sit within, and are not dramatically lower than, the oral-exposure-derived systemic TTCs for the same Cramer classes (1800 and 90 μg/day) — despite the inhalation calculation assuming 100% absorption versus the oral route's assumed 50% absorption factor.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
A comparison the authors themselves frame as reassuring; it does not establish that the inhalation route is equally well characterized as the oral route, only that the two threshold estimates are of similar magnitude for these particular chemical classes.
Source: Carthew, Clapp & Gutsell 2009, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
All three named authors of this inhalation-TTC methodology paper were Unilever employees at Unilever's own research center (Colworth Science Park, UK), and the paper states 'The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest' even though the work was industry research explicitly aimed at reducing inhalation-toxicology testing requirements on the authors' own company's aerosol consumer products under REACH and the EU Cosmetics Directive's 2013 animal-testing ban.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
A self-declared 'no conflicts of interest' statement from an industry-employed author group performing industry-funded research aimed at reducing regulatory testing burden on their own company's products.
Source: Carthew, Clapp & Gutsell 2009, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Industry source
The fragrance industry's aggregate consumer exposure model began in 2015 covering 19 personal-care and cosmetic product types across a 36,446-subject Europe/US survey, using dermal and oral exposure routes only — it did not estimate inhaled fragrance exposure at all.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
This is the founding Phase 1 methods paper of the same RIFM/Creme model line whose Phase 2 (Comiskey 2017) added a first, partial inhalation route two years later, and whose Phase III (Lee 2024) closed the gap industry-wide nine years later.
Source: Comiskey 2015 (RIFM/Creme Global), Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
The fragrance industry's own probabilistic (Monte Carlo) exposure model estimated aggregate systemic exposure for four fragrance ingredients (vanillin, benzaldehyde, BMHCA, isoeugenol) at 11.5 to 25-fold lower than the deterministic worst-case method recommended by the EU's SCCS for assessing cosmetic ingredient safety.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Industry-funded (RIFM); both sides of the comparison are modeled, not measured; limited to 4 of the 8 ingredients studied and to 13 of the SCCS's 17 product types (the model does not cover 4 make-up categories).
Source: Safford 2017, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Self-reported survey
The cosmetics industry generated its own dataset for how much lipstick, body lotion, and face cream people actually use, written by staff of the cosmetics trade association (CTFA), the fragrance industry's safety institute (RIFM), a contract statistics firm, and personal-care manufacturers including P&G, Unilever, Avon, Johnson & Johnson, Mary Kay, L'Oreal, Bath & Body Works and Takasago.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
No funding statement is printed in the paper, but every author's affiliation is a cosmetics/fragrance trade body or personal-care manufacturer; absence of a disclosure is not evidence of independence.
Source: Loretz 2005, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Self-reported survey
The cosmetics and fragrance industry generated its own dataset for how much perfume, hairspray, foundation, shampoo, body wash, and antiperspirant people actually use, written by staff of the cosmetics trade association (CTFA), the fragrance industry's safety institute (RIFM), and personal-care manufacturers including P&G, Unilever, Avon, Johnson & Johnson, Mary Kay, L'Oreal, Dial, and Takasago.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
No funding statement is printed in the paper, but every author's affiliation is a cosmetics/fragrance trade body or personal-care manufacturer; absence of a disclosure is not evidence of independence.
Source: Loretz 2006, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Self-reported survey
Real-time diaries found people using hairspray and other personal-care products up to six times more often than an older survey that just asked women to recall their past use, even though the two studies agreed fairly well on how much was used per application — suggesting recall surveys mainly undercount how often people use a product, not how much they use each time.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
The 1983 comparison survey's protocol was not standardized or described, so the size of the gap cannot be fully attributed to recall bias versus a real change in behavior over the intervening two decades.
Source: Loretz 2006, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Self-reported survey
The cosmetics industry generated its own dataset for how much facial cleanser, hair conditioner, and eye shadow people actually use, written by staff of the cosmetics trade association (CTFA), the fragrance industry's safety institute (RIFM), a contract statistics firm, and personal-care manufacturers including Procter & Gamble, Dial, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Mary Kay, L'Oreal, and Takasago, whose own conflict-of-interest statement says 'there are no conflicts of interest.'
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
No separate funding statement is printed in the paper, but every author's affiliation is a cosmetics/fragrance trade body or personal-care manufacturer; the paper's own 'no conflicts' declaration does not amount to independent verification.
Source: Loretz 2008, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Government agency
The cosmetics industry's own safety panel (CIR, funded by the Personal Care Products Council) concluded in 2021 that Benzophenone-1, -2, -3, -4, -5, -6, -8, -9, -10, -11 and -12 are 'safe' in cosmetics at their present concentrations of use, including Benzophenone-3 (oxybenzone) used as a light stabilizer or fragrance-formulation ingredient at up to 0.5%.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
This is the industry panel's own conclusion, not an independent or governmental safety finding; CIR is funded by the Personal Care Products Council. The Panel's Discussion and Conclusion sections address only carcinogenicity and incidental inhalation; they never revisit the extensive endocrine-activity data the same report catalogs in its own body.
Source: CIR 2021 Benzophenones Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Government agency
The COSMILE Europe cosmetic-ingredient app and database is run by Cosmetics Europe, described in its own press release as "the European trade association for the cosmetics and personal care industry," together with 12 national cosmetics-industry member associations, not by the European Commission or any EU government body.
Moderate evidence: This is the organization's own self-description of its ownership and funding, not an independent audit; the app itself was first built by a German industry association (IKW).
Source: Cosmetics Europe 2023 Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
As of 2025, the cosmetics industry's own safety scientists say the 'airborne fraction' values used to calculate inhalation exposure to hairspray, deodorant, and perfume sprays are a heuristic convenience carried over from a 2009 model, not physically grounded measurements, and a dedicated industry project (ICCS) to generate real product-specific values is still ongoing.
Moderate evidence: This is the industry's own admission of a data gap in its own exposure model, not an outside critique.
Source: Steiling et al. 2025, Toxicology Letters Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Measured in people or real products
All cleaning products tested in this study (laundry detergent, fabric softener, dust/floor/glass cleaners, and a smoke remover) contained detectable VOCs; alkanes (mainly n-tetradecane, 87 µg/mL in the laundry detergent) and terpenes (mainly limonene, up to 64 µg/mL in the smoke-remover spray) were the dominant classes, while chlorine bleach (not itself tested for VOCs but used liberally) was linked to the chloroform and carbon tetrachloride found in laundry-room air.
Moderate evidence: Only 7 products from one hotel were tested; formulations vary by brand and hotel.
The industry / Other evidence
After inspecting a New York homeopathic drug maker (HomeoCare Laboratories) in January 2017, FDA cited four manufacturing-quality violations: no validation of manufacturing processes, no real in-process uniformity control, no identity test on each ingredient, and no annual product review ever done.
Moderate evidence: One firm, one regulator's letter; it summarizes observations and gives no assay data or lot counts.
Source: FDA warning letter 521717, 7 Sep 2017, FDA warning letter (MARCS-CMS 521717), 7 September 2017 Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
In May 2024 the flavor industry's own safety panel (FEMA) removed estragole, a tarragon and basil constituent it describes as having genotoxic and carcinogenic properties in rodent liver, from its GRAS list when added as such, pending data on DNA damage in human cells.
Moderate evidence: Industry panel's own decision; no date given and no FDA or EU action is described. Says nothing about estragole inside natural oils.
Source: FEMA Expert Panel 2024 (GRAS 31), Food Technology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
In 2010 the UK Government could not say how much the NHS spent on homeopathy: it said the data 'have never been routinely collected', most Primary Care Trusts did not routinely commission it, and gathering detail would be a disproportionate use of resources.
Moderate evidence: No figure given; the PCT survey results are described only as 'the majority', not counted.
Source: UK Department of Health, Government Response to the Science and Technology Committee report 'Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy', Cm 7914 (July 2010), Command Paper Cm 7914 (July 2010) Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
EWG says it does receive financial and in-kind support from companies, including organic food, personal care, and financial-services companies, plus licensing fees from its EWG Verified program ($2.05 million of licensing and consulting revenue in 2024).
Moderate evidence: No company names or corporate-support amounts are given; the licensing line may also include consulting fees.
Source: EWG Funding & Reports page, 2026, EWG website (web page) Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
The cosmetics industry's own safety panel (the Cosmetic Ingredient Review, funded by the Personal Care Products Council) concluded in a May 2015 draft that 80 polysorbates, including polysorbate 60, are safe in cosmetics only 'when formulated to be non-irritating'.
Moderate evidence: Industry-funded panel's position, in a draft stamped 'do not cite or quote'; the published version was not read.
Source: CIR 2015 draft Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
The cosmetics industry's CIR panel, funded by the Personal Care Products Council, reports hydrogen peroxide use at up to 12.4% in consumer hair dyes, up to 12% in hair bleaches, 15% in a professional developer, 4.6% in dentifrices and 4% in aerosol hair sprays, from a 2017 industry survey.
Moderate evidence: Maximum reported use concentrations from a voluntary industry survey and FDA's voluntary registration database; not measured consumer exposure.
Source: Becker et al. 2024, International Journal of Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
The flavor trade association argues the Delaney Clause is 'antiquated science' that should be reformed, and it presents FDA's 2018 delisting of seven rodent-carcinogenic flavors, while also calling them safe at use levels, as proof.
Weak evidence: An advocacy position from FEMA authors in a review, not a finding; the petitioning NGOs and the statute's text take the opposite view.
Source: Hallagan 2020, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
The dye trade is still active: distributors were found for most of 60 listed hazardous dyes, up to 44 for some, mostly in China and India, including two IARC-suspected carcinogens.
Weak evidence: Rough lookchem.com search; shows availability, not use in textiles.
Source: Danish EPA 2014, Survey of Chemical Substances in Consumer Products No. 129 Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
EWG states it accepts no programmatic funding from food, household-cleaning, or personal-care companies, no funding for corporate-sponsored research, and no payment of any kind for inclusion or scoring in Skin Deep, Guide to Healthy Cleaning, or Food Scores.
Weak evidence: This is a policy statement by EWG itself; 'programmatic funding' is not defined and no audit of compliance is on the page.
Source: EWG Funding & Reports page, 2026, EWG website (web page) Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
At its March 2015 meeting a CIR panelist said the Panel does not consider carcinogen-containing ingredients safe in products, so polysorbates enhancing a carcinogen 'wouldn't be an issue'; other participants noted known carcinogens, including formaldehyde, still occur in some cosmetics.
Weak evidence: Transcript of oral discussion, not a finding; the final wording of the Discussion was left to editorial comment.
Source: CIR 2015 draft Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Review of other studies
Major retailers have pledged to cut phthalates, for example Sephora aiming to reduce 8 phthalates by 50% over 3 years, and CVS, Walmart, Rite Aid and Loblaw working toward elimination in beauty and personal care products, which the authors cite as proof that elimination is feasible.
Weak evidence: Pledges as reported by the authors in 2020 from company announcements; delivery not verified here.
Source: Engel 2021, American Journal of Public Health Link to this fact
Information, not medical advice. See also: myths we won’t tell you.