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.
Fragrance is everywhere / Measured in people or real products
Perfume, air fresheners, and dryer sheets carried the highest levels of fragrance chemicals and the phthalate DEP; the pooled perfume sample was 1.4% DEP by weight.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Single pooled composite per category (Dodson 2012). The perfume DEP level is now independently supported by two other labs: FDA's Hubinger & Havery 2006 measured 0.55-3.9% DEP in individual fragrance products, and Health Canada's Koniecki 2011 (n=252, the largest of the three) measured DEP up to 2.6% in 70% of 30 fragrance products — three independent labs across two countries now bracket Dodson's 1.4% figure for perfume specifically. The air-freshener and dryer-sheet parts still rest on Dodson alone (Koniecki tested only cosmetic/personal-care products, no air fresheners or dryer sheets), so the combined claim stays moderate.
Source: Dodson 2012, Environmental Health Perspectives Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Measured in people or real products
Women who had used perfume in the previous day had nearly 3 times as much of a phthalate breakdown product (from diethyl phthalate, a chemical used to carry fragrance) in their urine as women who hadn't.
Moderate evidence: Single spot urine, 337 mostly white educated women; replicated by Braun 2014.
Source: Parlett 2013, Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Measured in people or real products
The more personal care products a woman used, the higher her levels of diethyl phthalate; deodorant (2.8x), nail polish (2.1x) and hair spray (1.8x) users also had higher levels.
Moderate evidence: Cross-sectional association; one urine sample.
Source: Parlett 2013, Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Measured in people or real products
The more personal care products a pregnant woman used in a day, the higher her urine levels of phthalates and parabens, rising step by step.
Moderate evidence: Association with self-reported use.
Source: Braun 2014, Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Review of other studies
In US national biomonitoring, MEP, the breakdown product of the fragrance solvent DEP, was the most abundant phthalate in people's urine (average 181 ug/g creatinine).
Moderate evidence: NHANES data cited by a review; cite CDC primary; secondary citation of older NHANES data, cite the CDC report directly.
Source: Crinnion 2010, Alternative Medicine Review Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Animal study
The vapor from a single cologne contained at least twenty identifiable chemicals – limonene, linalool, linalyl acetate, alpha- and beta-pinene, terpinolene, citronellol, anethole, coumarin, diethyl phthalate among them – none of which appear on the label.
Moderate evidence: Qualitative GC/MS of one test atmosphere, recoveries unknown, isomers possibly unresolved; one unnamed product.
Source: Anderson & Anderson 1998, Archives of Environmental Health Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Measured in people or real products
In FDA's 2006 cosmetics survey, fragrance products carried the highest diethyl phthalate levels of any category tested (up to 3.9% by weight), and nail products carried the highest dibutyl phthalate levels (up to 6% by weight).
Moderate evidence: N=48 products, one purchasing round; category sizes as small as 1-9 products.
Source: Hubinger & Havery 2006, Journal of Cosmetic Science Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Measured in people or real products
In a study of 164 pregnant women in New York City, the phthalate metabolites MEP and MnBP were detected in 100% of urine samples.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Single cohort (n=164), minority pregnant women in one US city, not nationally representative; the video's specific '95% of 100 people' figure is not itself confirmed anywhere in our evidence base, but the direction is right and, if anything, conservative — this and a second small cohort (33 breastfeeding North Carolina women, Hines 2009, c-bdc5cb74a2, 'nearly all' urine samples) both found detection at or near 100%, and MEP (DEP's metabolite) is separately confirmed as the most abundant phthalate in US biomonitoring (c-287b7bebca, Crinnion 2010, citing NHANES). No single graded claim states a national (NHANES) detection percentage in our evidence base.
Source: Just 2010 (or equivalent NYC pregnant-women cohort), Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology 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
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
Information, not medical advice. See also: myths we won’t tell you.