On average, a woman uses 20 fragranced products in her daily life. It's not just beauty products, but also the fragrance and cleaning products you use in your home. It's perfectly understandable that you want to smell good in your home - everyone wants that. But do you have any idea how many toxic chemicals they might contain? In this article, we do a bit of research to find out what you use on a daily basis and how they can be damaging your own health. Of course we don't leave you on your own, we also give you tips on natural alternatives!
"What we call a rose, by any name, is just as fragrant"
... says Shakespeare, but let's look at it a little more the other way round: it makes a difference what your home smells of. Nearly 4,000 different chemicals are used as fragrances in beauty and cleaning products sold in conventional shops. But since the list of these is a trade secret, you won't find their exact names on the label, just 'fragrance'.
Do you know what you are perfuming with?
Would you believe us if we told you that even the world-famous Chanel perfumes may contain harmful substances? We don't say it, the documentary Stink! says it. In fact, it's even more absurd than that, because some of the ingredients in the legendary Chanel 5 perfume are exactly the same as those found in toilet cleaners.
Even more frightening, many chemicals known as "endocrine disruptor chemicals" (or CDEs) disrupt the endocrine system. These fragrance chemicals, which are also found in conventional cleaning products, can disrupt the endocrine system, causing serious health damage. And according to the research cited in the film, there are more than 280 chemicals in the average woman's blood, and even in the blood of newborn babies, there are almost as many chemicals.
In our country, we may be better off than that, as the European Union applies much stricter standards - for example, it bans more than a thousand carcinogens and reproductive toxins in product development.
How many chemicals can there be in your home?
Even if you don't use perfume, lotions and the like on a daily basis, we bet you have a shop-bought product at home that's scented. Somehow, the concepts of a clean home and a scented home are linked in our minds - if you have a clean home, you expect a pleasant smell.
So you're not alone in your preference for cleaning products based on their scent. Why wouldn't you? Because that's the smell you'll smell at home after a job well done... Except that you might be choosing toxic substances. Think about what makes the smell so long-lasting. We tend to see it as an advantage if, for example, a mop leaves a fresh smell in the house for a long time. But in many cases, the ingredient responsible for durability is called phthalates, which carry a number of health risks.
"If we look closely at beauty and cleaning products, we find that there are many ingredients of concern behind the fragrance label." explains Janet Nudelman, founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.
Spot cleaners, toilet cleaning gels, all-purpose cleaners - almost all traditional cleaning products contain some kind of fragrance. But as we've already mentioned above, you may not know exactly what they are.
So take care when cleaning to protect your health!
In our previous article, we've listed some important rules to follow for your health. We've already covered how inhaling traditional cleaning products can damage your lungs. If you missed it, catch up now: so you don't pay a high price for a clean home!
The best advice is therefore always to try to follow the principle of chemical-free cleaning and to make a conscious effort to use natural cleaning products.
So what is a good fragrance in all respects?
... or what you can do for both your home and your health? If you listen to us, you'll get rid of chemical-containing, fragranced cleaning products one by one and switch to natural cleaning products instead.
If you're thinking of the strong smell of vinegar that comes with vinegar-based cleaning products, forget it, it's not that at all! Shop-bought natural cleaners can smell just as good as the conventional versions - some green solutions contain 100% natural essential oils. Imagine your home smelling like lemon or lavender. Now that sounds better, doesn't it?
Natural essential oils also have other super effects besides fragrance. Lavender oil , for example, has long been used in aromatherapy for its calming and stress-relieving scent, its ability to promote quality sleep and its effectiveness in the treatment of respiratory problems.
The solution: essential oils
Similarly, lemon oil is often used to treat upper respiratory illnesses, but it can also be useful in everyday life as a mood booster and concentration aid. So with natural essential oils, you not only get a pleasant scent, but you're also doing your health a lot of good.
In CYCLE cleaning products, it's these two essential oils that are responsible for the heavenly scent that wafts through your home after cleaning. Or is scent not so important to you and you would prefer fragrance-free natural cleaning products? Let us know what you think! The next step in our product development is the production of fragrance-free cleaning products with optional essential oils.
