The average woman uses 20 scented products in her daily life. This includes not only beauty products, but also the fragrances and cleaning products used in your home. It's understandable that you want your home to smell good - everyone wants that. But do you have any idea how many toxic chemicals they might contain? In our article, we'll dig into the topic a bit and show you what you use on a daily basis and how you're harming your own health with them. Of course, we won't leave you alone here, we'll also give you tips for natural alternatives!
"What we call a rose, no matter what we call it, is just as fragrant"
… says Shakespeare, but let’s examine this a little more closely, and vice versa: it doesn’t matter what makes your home smell good. Nearly 4,000 different chemicals are used as fragrances in beauty and cleaning products sold in traditional stores. However, since the list of these is a trade secret, you won’t find their exact names on the label, only “fragrance”.
Do you know what you're using to perfume?
Would you believe us if we said that even the world-famous Chanel perfumes could contain harmful substances? We're not saying that, the documentary Stink! says so. In fact, the situation is even more absurd, because some of the ingredients in the legendary Chanel 5 perfume are exactly the same as those found in toilet cleaners.
Even more frightening is that many chemicals called “endocrine disruptor chemicals” (or CDEs) cause disruption in the endocrine system. These chemicals, which are also found in traditional cleaning products and are responsible for fragrance, can disrupt the functioning of the hormone system, causing serious health damage. According to research cited in the film, the average woman’s blood contains more than 280 different chemicals, and even newborns have nearly that many chemicals in their blood.
In our country, we may be in a better position than this, as the European Union applies much stricter standards - for example, it prohibits more than a thousand types of carcinogens and reproductive toxins during product development.
How many types of chemicals might be in your home?
Even if you don't use perfume, body lotion, and the like on a daily basis, we bet you have a store-bought product at home that smells good. Somehow, the concept of a clean home and a fragrant home have become connected in our brains - if your home is clean, you expect it to smell nice too.
So you're not alone if you tend to choose cleaning products based on their scent. Why wouldn't you? After all, that's the scent you'll smell at home after a job well done... But in this case, you could easily be choosing toxic substances. Just think about what makes a scent last so long. We tend to see it as an advantage if, for example, a mop leaves a fresh scent in the house for a long time. However, in many cases, the ingredient called phthalates is responsible for the longevity, which carries a number of health risks.
“If you look closely at beauty and cleaning products, you can see that there are many ingredients of concern hidden behind the fragrance label,” explains Janet Nudelman, founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.
Stain remover, toilet cleaning gel, general cleaning products - almost all traditional cleaning products contain some kind of fragrance. However, as we wrote above, you can't know exactly what these are.
So pay attention to these when cleaning to protect your health!
In our previous article, we have already collected the important rules that you should follow for the sake of your health. We already covered how inhaling traditional cleaning products can harm your lungs. If you missed it, catch up now: this way you don't pay a high price for a clean home!
The best advice is always to try to follow the chemical-free principle and, through conscious shopping, strive to use natural cleaning products as much as possible!
So what kind of fragrance is a good fragrance in every way?
... so what is it that you do both for your home and your health? If you listen to us, you will get rid of chemical-containing, scented cleaning products one by one and switch to natural cleaning products instead.
If you immediately think of the strong vinegar smell that comes with vinegar-based cleaners, forget it quickly, that's not the case at all! Natural cleaning products available in the store can smell just as nice as the traditional versions - some green solutions contain 100% natural essential oils. Imagine your home being greeted by the pleasant scent of lemon or lavender. Sounds better, right?
Natural essential oils also have other great effects besides fragrance. It's no wonder, for example, that lavender oil has long been used in aromatherapy: its scent is calming, has a stress-relieving effect, supports quality sleep, and can be used effectively for respiratory problems.
The solution: essential oils
Similarly, lemon oil is often used to treat upper respiratory tract diseases, but its mood-enhancing and concentration-boosting effects can also come in handy in everyday life. So with natural essential oils, you not only get a pleasant scent, but you also benefit your health.
In CYCLE cleaning products, these two essential oils are responsible for the heavenly scent that fills your home after cleaning. Or is scent not that important to you, and would you also like to choose fragrance-free natural cleaning products? Share your opinion with us! The next step in our product development is the production of fragrance-free cleaning products, with optional essential oils.
