• Fat, smelly & stupid?
• An unlikely scenario?
• Out of control
• Drugs regulated
• From washing to brainwashing
• What are the dangers?
• Perfumed air, perfumed rain
• Fragrant as pigs in...
• Perfumed animals
• Informed consent?
• Can anything be done?
• References
• Further information
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Contents in Full

 

Please see the petition to protect the public from exposure to artificial perfumes.

Drugs regulated, ‘perfumes’ not – why?

Looking at the poor success rate of medicinal drugs, which are screened for safety, one might well wonder why perfumes are not. Let us compare the two types of product.

• In drug development, chemicals are chosen because they appear likely to be therapeutic and safe. So how many do you think are successful? 75%? 50% 25%?

  In fact fewer than one in a thousand pass the tests required to gain a licence, because most turn out not to be safe and effective after all. Then many licences are withdrawn due to serious adverse effects. Yet prescribed drugs still harm hundreds of thousands of people every year, and kill thousands in the UK alone.

  Perfume chemicals are selected not for their potential to treat or prevent illness safely, but for their smell and their persistence. So how many of these are likely to be safe...?

• Drugs are designed to be taken only by direct users, and we are urged not to share them.

  Perfumes are designed to evaporate into the air, exposing everyone.

• Drugs are usually taken by mouth, and most cannot get into the brain easily.

  Perfumes are inhaled through the nose, which enables them to access the brain directly. There is evidence that they can damage the human brain (see below).

• Yet, amazingly, while drugs have to undergo lengthy testing before they can be used by individuals,

  Perfume chemicals have been, and are still being, used widely in ways which expose all of us, despite not having been properly tested for safety. They are in fact becoming harder and harder to avoid.

Avoiding them would appear to be a very good idea.

But apart from a tiny minority of specified chemicals, the identities of perfume ingredients (and there may be up to three hundred in a single product) are hidden by manufacturers under the term ‘parfum’ or other general term, claiming ‘commercial confidentiality’. This makes no sense when other, non-perfume ingredients have to be explicitly named.

How did we get to this situation?

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