Posted inOur Scented Life
Fragrance Safety: Clearing up the Confusion
The Internet is loaded with bloggers and while I never imagined I’d be one of them, I am now—life can be full of surprises. With a lot of bloggers comes a lot of information; it seems that every month, some article comes out that calls into question the safety of fragrance products, and I’d like to clear up some of the confusion.
One of the more frequent online subjects is VOCs. VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compounds. Relative to this acronym, the word volatile means the tendency of a substance to evaporate. Organic in this situation means that the substance being described is made out of carbon molecules, which may include naturally occurring compounds and man-made substances based on carbon, such as fragrance oils. Most people use the term VOC to mean a harmful air pollutant, not just carbon-based molecules that can evaporate. But the truth is you breathe VOCs when you smell a bouquet of flowers or the aroma of garlic when you cook. Without VOCs, we would live in a fragrance-free world and never use our sense of smell.
