The Facts on Fragrance

James Kennedy: I’m James Kennedy and I’m an author, chemistry teacher and blogger. Today I’m trying to break some of the misconceptions that people have about chemicals.

Chemicals are not dangerous in themselves. This next section allows us to explore fragrances and how fragrances enhance our experience of life.

We’ll have fragrances that meet the strict standards to be “allergen-free” and we’ll also have fragrances that exceed those standards that are suitable for babies. All “synthetic” means in terms of synthetic fragrances is that the original starting ingredient has been modified and processed so much that it’s changed. So, it’s not completely created by people – in fact, most of the work is done by nature, we just then modify it to make it a synthetic fragrance.

Fragrances actually enhance mother and baby bonding; there’s actually lots of science behind this. Lavender bath oil reduced stress and crying in young infants. No matter how fragrances are created, synthetically or naturally, the molecules can be the same, but we can’t say that one is always better than the other. Usually, in fact, natural ones will contain more allergens. It’s almost impossible to tell which one is safe for babies just by smelling, right? We have to trust the manufacturer that they followed the correct rules for making a safe-for-baby fragrance. Everything is more interesting in life when you have fragrance.

Dad 1: Synthetic is not always bad.

Mom 1: Baby product fragrances are amazing. And we’ve been told that fragrances should not be there in products. I would love other mothers to know more about it because baby products are one thing that we really need to be cautious about.