Lately on the internet there’s been so much talk about fragrance in skincare. I’ve probably heard more about fragrance in skincare within the last six months than I have in my entire skincare life (I’ve had a skincare routine since I was 10 and I’ll be 40 next year…lol). Fragrance was always something that I thought about–if a product had a STRONG scent even if it was one that was pretty pleasing to my nose, if it was overwhelming I passed on it. Oddly enough though, if a product smelled BAD, I could suck it up and still use it if I liked the benefits. For example there was a moisturizer I used to have in my routine that contained DMAE that I loved but it smelled like fish. I slapped that fishy moisturizer on my face anyway…lol. Thankfully the smell didn’t linger.
I no longer use the moisturizer because I found a less expensive one that I liked better, but you better believe if I had not I’d still be using it.
But with all the talk about how BAD fragrance supposedly is in skincare, why would brands continue to put it in there? Something didn’t correlate to me so I had a chat with one of Johnson & Johnson’s R&D (research and development) scientists, Paul LaTerra. J&J is one of the biggest skincare companies out there with brands like Neutrogena and Aveeno.
Why do brands add fragrance to products?
Fragrance is not added because of any benefit to the skin, so why do brands add them to products?
To make a long story short: fragrance enhances a user’s experience with a product. And as humans, we tend to like nice things. I don’t necessarily think it’s bad for a product to smell good as it might make us more likely to use them regularly in our routine. But fragrance can be such a personal thing— for me, I can love a product and hate the smell or I can love the smell and hate the product. And some people straight up have an allergic reaction to fragrance.
Why does fragrance have a bad rap?
Fragrance is often associated with allergens, but there are fragrances that contain little to no allergens. You sometimes hear this line of thinking where it’s like “if fragrance has a chance of causing irritation, then don’t use anything with fragrance,” and that can lead to the misconception that fragrance is the big bad wolf.
Think about it this way: (and I have the R&D scientist to thank for this analogy) you know how intense precautions need to be if someone has a peanut allergy? And how vocal people with peanut allergies rightfully are? We hear about peanut allergies often and what can happen to a person with one. But if you don’t have a peanut allergy, do you steer clear of peanuts (assuming you’re not someone who just doesn’t like the taste of them)?
How can we identify what is “fragrance” in a product?
Fragrance is often made of many different ingredients so instead of listing out each one, it can be listed as just “fragrance” on the packaging. This is also a way of protecting a brand’s proprietary property so one can’t copy a brand’s signature scent. But there are times when using the blanket term “fragrance” isn’t appropriate for a product because a brand is using a single fragrant component, so sometimes those components are listed individually. That can be a bit confusing to the average consumer looking at the ingredient listing. So what’s a consumer to do? LOOK IT UP.
But my caution here is that when you look up ingredients you look at several sources. There are sites out there that will tell you EVERYTHING is bad…lol. But learning more about what’s in your products is important especially for those who are more on the sensitive side. It also helps to lessen your chances of falling prey to fear mongering.
For example, I put up a post about niacinamide and someone commented that they’re not using something they can’t pronounce (meanwhile niacinamide is an ingredient that has a small chance of causing a reaction in most people). Some people often think of ingredients with long names as being full of chemicals and “chemicals” are bad. But everything is a chemical.
Lab Muffin did a video on her Youtube channel on dispelling some skincare myths and showed what looked like a very complex ingredient listing with some words that may be hard to pronounce for some people. The “if I can’t pronounce it, I don’t want it near me” crowd would probably avoid the “dangerous” item based on its ingredients.
But you know what the item was?
A PINEAPPLE.
A lot of things we use everyday without consequences can have very difficult-looking scientific names. Knowledge is power, people.
Unscented vs Fragrance-Free
This one can trip many of us up, but R&D scientist Paul LaTerra broke it down by saying to separate fragrance from odor. Everything has an odor. Some ingredients put into a product often have an odor, and some of those can have an odor that is off-putting. This also ties back to why some brands put fragrance in products.
Fragrance-free means there is no ingredient, whether a single component or the number of components listed as “fragrance,” in the formula. There’s nothing in there whose primary purpose is to fragrance the product. But a fragrance-free product could still have an odor—even a pleasant odor. For example, some preservatives in a product can have an odor, but that product could still be labeled as fragrance-free because that preservative isn’t in there to fragrance the product–it’s in there to keep the product from going bad quickly.
A product may not be odor-free, but it can be fragrance-free.
Unscented isn’t as regulated a term. It can mean the product can contain ingredients whose primary purpose in the formula is to neutralize the odor of a product. An unscented product can still have fragrance in it because the fragrance is used to make the product smell like “nothing.”
My thoughts
Fragrance allergy is real. There is a percentage of the population who have an allergy to fragrance and for those it should definitely be avoided. And if you’re part of that percentage of the population and have a richer skin tone, as one of my Youtube faves Dr. Alexis Stephens says, “irritation can lead to inflammation and inflammation can lead to hyperpigmentation.” Those of us with richer skin tones (Fitzpatrick IV-VI) are unique in that sometimes irritation, a cut, a scratch, a burn can trigger our melanocytes and lead to post inflammatory hyperpigmentation. Some of us also have other types of health conditions that can make the skin more sensitive. We should all learn about the ingredients in products, get tested for allergies, and be diligent about patch testing products before we rush to add them into our routines.
But while there may be a small percentage of the population who has an allergy to fragrance, this doesn’t mean all fragrance is bad. Today we have access to much more info than previous generations which can be both a good and a bad thing…lol. I think we need to be more proactive when it comes to skincare: reading labels, learning about ingredients, seeing a doctor to test for allergies, patch-testing products before blindly adding them to our routines, etc. And here’s the thing: there are ingredients out there that can be more irritating than fragrance so it’s extremely important for us to take the steps I mentioned above.
Thanks again to Johnson & Johnson for sponsoring this post, and of course Paul LaTerra for being a great resource for info on this topic.
Neutrogena offers a variety of products for a variety of life stages (they came through with the acne products when I was a teen and now as an adult, and I’ve always loved their sunscreens) and within those products there are fragrance-free options, milder versions for those who are more sensitive, and more.
