Why I Don't Use Synthetic Fragrance — And What I Use Instead
When my youngest daughter was just a few months old, she broke out in a rash that covered most of her body.
What followed was months of doctor's appointments, elimination trials, testing, and the particular exhaustion that comes with watching your baby suffer while you search desperately for answers. The eventual diagnosis was both clarifying and overwhelming: severe eczema, likely caused by an allergy to all synthetic fragrances. The recommendation from her doctors was simple and staggering — avoid synthetic chemicals broadly.
I stood in the baby care aisle of the Albertson's next door and read label after label. Nearly every product — the ones marketed as gentle, as pure, as made for babies — contained fragrance.
That was the day I stopped buying products and started making them.
What "Fragrance" Actually Means on an Ingredient Label
Here's something that genuinely surprised me when I first learned it, and that I think every person who reads an ingredient label deserves to know:
The word "fragrance" on an ingredient label is not one ingredient. It is a legal loophole.
Under current FDA regulations, manufacturers are not required to disclose the individual components of a fragrance blend — they can list everything under the single umbrella term "fragrance" or "parfum." This means that one word on an ingredient label can represent anywhere from a handful to hundreds of individual chemical compounds, none of which you can identify from the label alone.
The fragrance industry operates under a self-regulatory body called the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials (RIFM), which maintains a list of approved fragrance ingredients. That list contains over 3,000 compounds. Many of them have never been independently tested for safety. Some of the ones that have been studied have raised significant concerns.
Among the chemicals commonly found in synthetic fragrance blends:
- Phthalates — used as fixatives to make scent last longer, known endocrine disruptors that have been linked to hormonal disruption in multiple studies
- Synthetic musks — including nitromusks and polycyclic musks, some of which have been found to accumulate in human tissue and have raised concerns about neurotoxicity
- Benzene derivatives — some of which are known carcinogens
- Aldehydes — common sensitizers that can trigger or worsen allergic reactions with repeated exposure
I want to be clear: I am not a toxicologist, and I am not telling you that every product containing fragrance will harm you. What I am telling you is that you cannot know what is in a product that lists "fragrance" as an ingredient — and that for people with sensitive skin, allergies, or chemical sensitivities, that unknown is not a risk worth taking.
Why This Matters More Than Most People Realize
Your skin is your largest organ. It is not an impermeable barrier — it absorbs what you put on it, and what it absorbs enters your bloodstream. The cosmetics and personal care industry has long operated on the assumption that topical products are categorically safer than ingestibles, but the science on dermal absorption tells a more complicated story.
Fragrance is also the number one cause of allergic contact dermatitis — a form of skin inflammation triggered by an immune response to a substance. The American Contact Dermatitis Society has named fragrance mix as an allergen of the year. Dermatologists routinely recommend fragrance-free products as a first-line intervention for patients with eczema, rosacea, psoriasis, and sensitive skin.
And yet — walk into any pharmacy, any grocery store, any big-box retailer, and try to find a lotion, a soap, a lip balm, or a body wash that doesn't contain fragrance. It is genuinely difficult. Even products labeled "unscented" frequently contain masking fragrances — synthetic compounds added specifically to cover the natural smell of other ingredients, which still appear on the label as "fragrance."
My daughter needed products that were genuinely free of these compounds. So I went to my grandmother, who had been making her own soaps for years, and learned to make them.
What I Use Instead
Here's the thing about fragrance-free formulation: it is not about making products that smell like nothing. It is about making products whose scent — if they have one — comes entirely from ingredients you can name, trace, and understand.
In the Rainroot Apothecary line, scent comes from exactly three sources:
1. The botanicals themselves Slow-infused calendula has a warm, faintly floral, deeply green scent. Comfrey root smells of earth and rain. Plantain is clean and slightly grassy. These are not perfume notes — they are the smell of the plant, present in the oil because the plant is present in the oil. They are subtle, natural, and completely transparent.
2. Beeswax Organic beeswax has a gentle, warm, honey-adjacent scent that is one of the most universally beloved natural aromas in skin care. It requires nothing added to it.
3. Essential oils — used selectively and intentionally Where I use essential oils, I try to use them because they bring something beyond scent to the formula. Lavender essential oil (Lavandula angustifolia) is known for its skin-supportive properties and has a long history of traditional use in herbal skin care. Tea tree essential oil (Melaleuca alternifolia) is widely recognized for its cleansing properties. These are not fragrance ingredients — they are functional botanical ingredients that happen to have a scent.
I do not use essential oils in every product. Where a product is offered in an unscented version, that version contains none — not even a masking agent. What you smell is the formula itself.
A Note on "Natural Fragrance"
You may have noticed that some brands — particularly those marketing themselves as clean or natural — have begun listing "natural fragrance" on their ingredient labels rather than "fragrance."
I want to address this directly, because it is a source of genuine confusion: "natural fragrance" is not meaningfully different from "fragrance" in terms of label transparency. It is still a proprietary blend. The individual components are still not disclosed. The fact that the source materials may be natural does not mean the resulting compound is safe for sensitive skin or free of potential allergens.
If you have fragrance sensitivity, I would encourage you to treat "natural fragrance" with the same caution as "fragrance" — and to look for products that list every ingredient individually, with nothing hidden behind a blend term.
What This Means for You
If you have sensitive skin, eczema, rosacea, or known fragrance sensitivity — or if you simply want to know exactly what you're putting on your body — here is what I'd suggest:
-
Read every label. Look for "fragrance," "parfum," or "natural fragrance" — and decide for yourself whether you're comfortable with the unknown they represent.
-
Start with your most-used products. The products you use daily — shampoo, body lotion, lip balm, hand cream, laundry detergent — have the highest cumulative exposure. These are the most important ones to get right.
-
Give your skin a reset. If you've been dealing with persistent irritation, dryness, or reactive skin, try eliminating all fragranced products for 30 days. The results often speak for themselves.
-
Look for full ingredient transparency. Every Rainroot Apothecary product lists every ingredient — in INCI format and in plain language — because you deserve to know exactly what you're putting on your skin.
My daughter is grown now. She is an adult and makes her own, well-informed choices about what she puts on her skin - and she still uses my soap. The products my grandmother taught me to make for her became the foundation of everything I make today.
I didn't set out to build an apothecary. I set out to take care of my child with what the plant world had to offer.
It turns out that was enough to build something from.
— Briana, The Village Wisewoman, Renton, Washington
⚠️ Disclaimer: This post is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. If you have a known skin condition or allergy, please consult your healthcare provider.
Explore our fragrance-free product line | Learn more about our ingredients