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.
What you can do / Measured in people or real products
Perfume was the strongest single predictor of diethyl phthalate exposure, so skipping perfume and fragranced personal care products is the most obvious way to lower it.
Moderate evidence: Association only; not tested as an intervention.
Source: Parlett 2013, Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology Link to this fact
What you can do / Measured in people or real products
Musk levels in blood and milk seem to track current personal-care product use rather than lifetime storage: Hutter 2009 found that how often people used perfume and body lotion significantly predicted their blood levels of the polycyclic musks (galaxolide, tonalide) in 100 adults, so choosing fragrance-free personal care and laundry products during pregnancy and breastfeeding is a plausible way to lower a mother's musk levels and, in turn, transfer to the baby.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Route inferred in Reiner 2007 from the absence of an age trend in milk, and now supported by direct product-use data in two independent populations and matrices: Hutter 2009 (blood, non-pregnant Vienna adults) and Lignell 2008 (101 Swedish mothers, milk itself — the exact matrix this claim concerns). Lignell 2008 found perfume-use frequency predicted HHCB and perfumed-laundry-detergent use predicted AHTN in milk, but no product-use variable predicted musk xylene, matching Hutter's blood-based polycyclic/nitro split. Still correlational and cross-sectional; no study has measured milk musk levels before and after a change in a mother's product use, and no cosmetics-use variable has ever predicted a nitro musk in either study.
Source: Reiner 2007, Environmental Science & Technology Link to this fact
What you can do / Self-reported survey
Fragrance-free policies need to cover cleaning and laundry products, not just perfume: of 60 people who react to fragranced products, 50 named cleaning products, 47 perfume, and 41 laundry products as persistent triggers.
Moderate evidence: Self-selected Canadian sample (90% female); counts of participants naming a source, not exposure measurements.
Source: Roy 2026 Link to this fact
What you can do / Measured in people or real products
Ventilation and less ozone help: in the same test room, with lower ozone (25–30 ppb) and nearly 3× the air exchange, particle mass from perfume, hair spray, and body spray fell by more than half.
Moderate evidence: One supplementary run; ozone and ventilation changed together, so their separate effects are unknown.
Source: Wu 2024, Environmental Science & Technology Letters Link to this fact
What you can do / Self-reported survey
Fragrance-free health-care policies should cover cleaning and laundry products, not just staff perfume; Canadian advocates ask for exactly this, and people who react name cleaning products as their most common trigger (50 of 60).
Moderate evidence: Advocacy position plus a self-selected focus-group sample; no evidence yet that policies reduce exposure or symptoms.
What you can do / Measured in people or real products
How often someone used body lotion and perfume was directly linked to how much of the synthetic musks galaxolide and tonalide were in their blood, giving direct human evidence that switching to musk-free lotions and perfumes could lower blood levels of these fragrance chemicals.
Moderate evidence: Cross-sectional frequency-of-use questionnaire, not an intervention; the link was not shown for musk ketone or musk xylene, only for the polycyclic musks.
Source: Hutter 2009, Science of the Total Environment Link to this fact
What you can do / Self-reported survey
More than a third of people surveyed (37%) report avoiding at least one leave-on scented product (perfume, deodorant, skin cream) because it has caused them skin problems.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Self-reported avoidance, not a clinical diagnosis; nearly identical rates in the full interviewed sample (12,377) and the smaller patch-tested subsample (3,119), supporting representativeness.
Source: Diepgen 2015 (EDEN), British Journal of Dermatology Industry-funded Link to this fact
What you can do / Measured in people or real products
Because galaxolide (HHCB) levels in milk tracked perfume use and tonalide (AHTN) levels tracked scented-laundry-detergent use specifically, choosing fragrance-free perfume and fragrance-free laundry detergent during pregnancy and breastfeeding are each independently plausible ways to lower the corresponding musk chemical passed to a nursing infant.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Correlational and cross-sectional, no before/after intervention trial; musk xylene (a nitro musk) showed no association with any product category tested, so this action would not address that compound.
Source: Lignell 2008, Environmental Science & Technology Link to this fact
What you can do / Measured in people or real products
Read the ingredient list for the named allergens rather than trusting marketing words like 'sensitive' or 'soft' on a deodorant label; in one German sample, products carrying such words were no less likely to contain perfume or a strong allergen than the market as a whole.
Moderate evidence: Single-country label survey; does not establish the words are misleading everywhere, only in this sample.
Source: Klaschka 2012, International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health Link to this fact
What you can do / Measured in people or real products
Fabric type changes how much added perfume stays on clothes after washing: in a lab wash simulator, polyester retained more of a technical perfume accord than cotton after a full wash-and-rinse cycle, because cotton lost an average of about 70% of the perfume it picked up during the main wash over three rinses, versus only 40%-50% for polyester.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Industry (Procter & Gamble) lab study; coi/industry-funded despite the paper's own 'no conflict of interest' statement. Used a small-scale bench wash simulator, a model detergent, and a synthetic 22-component technical perfume accord, not a named commercial detergent or perfume. Measured fabric immediately after washing/rinsing only, not after days of storage or wear.
Source: Marcotullio 2025, Journal of Surfactants and Detergents Industry-funded Link to this fact
What you can do / Measured in people or real products
Washing cotton in cold water (20C) can deposit MORE, not less, of the more water-soluble perfume ingredients onto the fabric than a warmer 40C wash, because colder water pushes more hydrophilic perfume into surfactant micelles that then break and redeposit during rinsing; this effect was specific to cotton with detergent present and did not occur on polyester or on cotton without surfactant.
Moderate evidence: Coi/industry-funded (Procter & Gamble); one lab bench simulator, one detergent formula, one synthetic perfume accord; not tested on a named commercial cold-wash detergent.
Source: Marcotullio 2025, Journal of Surfactants and Detergents Industry-funded Link to this fact
What you can do / Review of other studies
When relying on a workplace, clinic, or school's fragrance-free policy, check whether it (1) defines what's covered beyond perfume, especially cleaning and laundry products, (2) sets a default fragrance-free expectation rather than a complaint-triggered one, (3) controls what cleaning/laundry products the institution buys, and (4) names a real consequence for non-compliance — a 2026 scoping review of 63 such policies found these structural features present in well under half of cases.
Moderate evidence: Based on a gray-literature document review of North American policies; individual policies may vary, and having these features on paper does not guarantee enforcement.
What you can do / Measured in people or real products
In this 1996 sample, 3 of 73 deodorants labeled "not perfumed" genuinely contained none of the 21 fragrance substances tested, on chemical analysis.
Moderate evidence: Very small sample (n=3) from one country/year snapshot; does not establish that "not perfumed"/"fragrance-free" labels are reliable in general or in other markets/years.
Source: Rastogi et al. 1998, Contact Dermatitis Link to this fact
What you can do / Review of other studies
Patch testing a patient's own perfume, deodorant, or shaving lotion, not only a standardized fragrance panel, has detected sensitizations (e.g. to jasmine absolute, ylang ylang oil, lyral) that the panel alone missed.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Relayed from North American (Belsito 2006) and German IVDK (Uter 2007) clinical series; useful practical guidance for allergic patients even though Brasch's own account is secondary.
Source: Brasch 2007, Current Opinion in Allergy and Clinical Immunology Link to this fact
What you can do / Government agency
After a 1993 ADA complaint over municipal-employee perfume use, San Francisco voluntarily adopted a policy requiring public meeting notices to ask attendees to refrain from wearing perfume or other scented products, to let people with environmental illness or multiple chemical sensitivity attend.
Moderate evidence: One city's voluntary accommodation, reported secondhand in DOJ's own letter; not evidence the policy was enforced or effective, and not a legal requirement.
Source: DOJ Civil Rights Division 1993 (TAL 383) Link to this fact
What you can do / Measured in people or real products
A single spray of perfume puts about a quarter gram of product on the skin (median 0.23 g per application), and a single hairspray application puts on about two grams from an aerosol can or three-and-a-half grams from a pump, based on a two-week diary-and-weighed-container study of regular users.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
From a women-only sample of already-regular product users who were given the product free; the study's own authors say the design likely overestimates rather than underestimates use.
Source: Loretz 2006, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
What you can do / Measured in people or real products
If you want an accurate sense of how strong your own perfume or home's ambient scent really is, ask someone who was not continuously exposed, since your own nose will have adapted specifically to that scent while remaining normally sensitive to everything else.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Based on an 8-person controlled study; the general mechanism (odorant-specific adaptation) is well replicated, but this specific framing is a reasonable extrapolation, not a tested intervention.
Source: Dalton & Wysocki 1996, Perception & Psychophysics Link to this fact
What you can do / Other evidence
Isoeugenol is a flavor ingredient (about 236 kg a year in the US) and also a classic fragrance allergen; the flavor panel's safety margin counts only eating it, not skin contact from deodorants or perfumes.
Moderate evidence: The article does not discuss fragrance exposure; 'allergen' status comes from other sources (Bruze 2005), not this page.
Source: Smith et al. 2009 (FEMA Expert Panel), GRAS Flavoring Substances 24, Food Technology 63(6), Food Technology Industry-funded Link to this fact
What you can do / Other evidence
Dermatitis patients who say a perfumed product has ever caused or worsened their rash had about double the odds (OR 2.16) of testing positive to a fragrance allergen, so such a history is a reason to ask for patch testing.
Moderate evidence: Self-report in a referred population; most 'yes' answers were not allergic (138 of 675).
Source: Bennike et al. 2019, Contact Dermatitis Link to this fact
What you can do / Measured in people or real products
Parabens are cosmetic and personal-care preservatives, not fragrance ingredients, so this child-behavior study provides no evidence about perfume or fragrance.
Moderate evidence: Paper measured only methyl-, ethyl- and propylparaben; no fragrance compounds, phthalates or MEP.
What you can do / Lab study (cells or chemistry)
Only 6 of 42 perfumes tested were comparatively low in hazardous compounds across ten lab tests, which suggests lower-hazard perfumes can be made.
Weak evidence: Products not named, so consumers cannot identify the cleaner ones; in vitro only.
Source: Morlock & Heil 2025, Journal of Chromatography A Link to this fact
What you can do / Self-reported survey
Perfume is most often sprayed on the neck and throat, then the arms — close to the nose and mouth — so people concerned about fragrance inhalation might consider applying it lower on the body or on clothing instead.
Weak evidence: Based on where 326-340 already-regular perfume users in one US industry survey said they applied product, not on any measurement of how application site changes inhaled dose.
Source: Loretz 2006, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
What you can do / Self-reported survey
Migraineurs who notice perfume, paint/varnish, gasoline, or bleach smells before their attacks may want to keep a trigger diary, since these were the most common self-reported odor triggers in one clinic sample.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Rests on a single non-random clinic sample (n=200, one Brazilian city, 2011); a personal pattern should be confirmed prospectively, not assumed from one study, and may reflect premonitory-phase symptom misattribution rather than a true external trigger.
What you can do / Self-reported survey
Migraineurs who notice their attacks are triggered by specific odors (most commonly perfume, cleaning products, cigarette smoke, or vehicle exhaust in this sample) may reasonably consider reducing exposure to those specific triggers as a low-cost self-management step.
Weak evidence: Based on self-reported association in one clinical sample, not a controlled-avoidance or provocation trial; benefit of avoidance was not tested.
Source: Fornazieri 2016, Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain Link to this fact
What you can do / Measured in people or real products
In 21 patients whose hydroperoxide allergy was judged certainly relevant, the products blamed were mostly rinse-off products such as soap and shampoo (15 of 21), then leave-on cosmetics and creams (9 of 21), plus detergents, deodorants and perfumes.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Small subgroup from one clinic; product type is the patient's and dermatologist's identification of products containing limonene or linalool on the label, not confirmed hydroperoxide content.
Source: Dittmar & Schuttelaar 2019, Contact Dermatitis Link to this fact
What you can do / Other evidence
In a lab model, perfume ingredients rubbed from one cotton swatch onto a clean one in as little as 10 seconds, and were still transferring when the perfume had dried on the first fabric for 48 hours.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Six pure compounds at about 50 times below typical perfume strength, cotton to cotton, crockmeter rubbing under a 9 N load, n = 3; one 48 h sample; forensic bench study, not a health or exposure study.
What you can do / Other evidence
Women who used anti-aging facial cream in a Mexican study had about 2.5 times the median monoethyl phthalate of nonusers (178 vs 71 ug/g creatinine); perfume users showed a similar-sized but statistically uncertain difference.
Weak evidence: Only 11 and 19 users, unadjusted rank-sum tests with about 80 product-metabolite comparisons, so a chance finding is plausible; perfume's own MEP difference was not significant.
Source: Romero-Franco 2011, Environment International Link to this fact
What you can do / Other evidence
In the perfume rat study, oral vitamin E (40 mg/kg/day) lessened many of the changes (blood pressure, heart rate, serum MDA, CYP1A1/CYP1A2 induction) without normalizing creatinine, troponin or PO2.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Rat oral dose, five animals per group, no human test; the printed serum MDA for the vitamin E group is identical to the control value, suggesting a transcription error; statistical letters show partial effects only.
Source: Al-Sowayan 2026, Frontiers in Pharmacology Link to this fact
Information, not medical advice. See also: myths we won’t tell you.