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 / Journalism
A perfumer writing in a chemistry journal said a natural ingredient such as rose oil is sometimes added in a "negligible quantity only to be able to say that you have rose oil in your formula", which "will please the marketing people" but does nothing for the scent.
Moderate evidence: Opinion; she advises against the practice and gives no frequency.
Source: Ellena 2008, Chemistry & Biodiversity Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Self-reported survey
More than a third of Germans (37.8%) think people who wear perfume are more hygiene-conscious; fragrance can mask a smell but does not clean.
Moderate evidence: Attitude item; the 'does not clean' half is the author's argument, not a measurement.
Source: Klaschka 2020, Environmental Sciences Europe Link to this fact
The industry / Measured in people or real products
Perfume that washes off fabric during rinsing does not just disappear into the drain: as surfactant concentration drops below the critical micelle concentration (measured at about 73.4 ppm in this study), micelles trapped in the wet fabric break open and redeposit their more hydrophobic perfume ingredients back onto the fabric, more strongly on cotton than on polyester because cotton retains far more water after spinning (about 0.7 kg water per kg dry cotton vs about 0.1 kg/kg for polyester).
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Coi/industry-funded (Procter & Gamble); single small-scale bench wash simulator, one model detergent formulation, and one synthetic perfume accord; mechanism inferred from surfactant titration and headspace GC-MS, not directly visualized.
Source: Marcotullio 2025, Journal of Surfactants and Detergents 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 / 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 / Other evidence
A fragrance fixative left on skin for hours in a lotion or perfume penetrates far more than the same chemical in a soap that is quickly rinsed off: an FDA lab's modeled estimate for musk xylol found roughly 50-60 times more absorbed mass from a 12-hour lotion application than from a 4-minute soap wash, at realistic in-use concentrations and body-surface areas.
Moderate evidence: Modeled, not directly measured for this scenario; the Kp was derived from more-permeable hairless guinea pig skin, which the authors themselves say overestimates human absorption.
Source: Hood 1996, Food and Chemical Toxicology Link to this fact
The industry / Measured in people or real products
Eau de Cologne is applied in far larger amounts per use than eau de toilette/perfume by both French men and women — roughly 1.8-4.3 g (mean) versus about a quarter gram, a 7- to 17-fold difference — reflecting the lower fragrance concentration and more liberal application of cologne-type products.
Moderate evidence: Small Eau de Cologne subgroups (n=11-17).
Source: Ficheux et al. 2016 (amount data), Food and Chemical Toxicology Link to this fact
Information, not medical advice. See also: myths we won’t tell you.