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.
Fragrance is everywhere / Measured in people or real products
In a mannequin-head test of 16 UK day face moisturizers, the authors report that one application (0.45 g) delivered on average about 16 times more limonene-type terpenes than 24 hours of typical UK home air, and, for the 7 products whose ethanol reached the nose, about 340 times more ethanol.
Weak evidence.
Caveats
Primary: Yeoman 2022 (Indoor Air 32:e12948), Table 6. The abstract's 'up to' is wrong: ×16 and ×339 are means over products with a nonzero dose (14/16, 7/16); maxima ×37 and ×804; over all 16 the medians are ×9 and ×0. Absolute doses are small (≤1.2 mg limonene; below UK PHE limits). The paper's own breathing-zone traces (Fig. 2, limonene ≤0.16 mg/m³) imply doses ~15–500× lower than its tables (evidence base arithmetic), so the ratios are unverified. No people; unheated head, lab at 5 ACH; 'limonene' = all monoterpenes.
Source: Yeoman 2022 via Rádis-Baptista 2023, Journal of Xenobiotics Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Other evidence
After spraying a car air freshener, benzene and several other aromatic VOCs measured in the cabin went down by an average of about 40% for benzene (except in recirculation mode) while limonene went up, so the product masks rather than removes the car's own chemicals.
Weak evidence: The sprays contained no benzene; the drop was transient, came with no unsprayed control, and the authors' masking/displacement explanation was not tested.
Source: Lee 2024, Science of The Total Environment Link to this fact
Fragrance is everywhere / Other evidence
Less volatile fragrance compounds (linalool, geraniol, eugenol, ethylene brassylate) moved onto a second fabric far more readily than the volatile terpenes pinene and limonene.
Weak evidence: Recoveries are percentages of a reference swatch for six compounds in a lab model; roughly 15-35% vs about 0.5-1% in the contact-time experiment.
Fragrance is everywhere / Other evidence
Four of six fragrance compounds could still be measured on cotton and polyester 28 days after transfer, but the two lightest citrus and pine terpenes (limonene, alpha-pinene) could not be quantified at room temperature.
Weak evidence: Detectability by sensitive GC-MS in a spiked-standard bench model, n = 3; says nothing about amounts that matter to health.
Information, not medical advice. See also: myths we won’t tell you.