“Non-Toxic” is a fallacy

It sounds definitive. Scientific, even. A product is either toxic or it isn’t. I get it, we are living in a time where people are making their own sourdough, growing their own food, and listening to a man who sounds like a fork stuck in a garbage disposal tell them which chemicals are secretly killing them. 

Naturally, non-toxic has become a popular word. In marketing. You see it on candles, cleaning products, cosmetics, skincare, and fragrance. And listen, 

I understand the appeal. Nobody wants to buy anything labeled toxic. But, here is the problem: “non-toxic” doesn’t actually hold any weight or mean anything. Chemistry is considerably less binary than the marketing would have us believe. Toxicity isn’t simple a personality trait a material either possesses or doesn’t. It depends on things like concentration, route of exposure, frequency and duration of exposure, and specific application. 

In other words, context matters. So many small home fragrance brands toss around the term “non-toxic”, and unfortunately a disclaimer doesn’t fit quite as nicely on a product label. It’s also not a regulated term. 

Example: water is essential for life. Too much water? You could drown. Too much oxygen and you could suffocate. The point isn’t that water or oxygen are inherently toxic, it’s that safety cannot be separated from exposure. 

Yet, somehow when discussing home fragrance this entire concept gets abandoned.

If an ingredient is labeled “toxic” it ends up being doxxed. But should it be? The more useful questions are:

How much?

How often?

In what product? 

Used how?

These questions aren’t nearly as sexy as a giant “non-toxic” green leaf stamp on a product label. But they are much more useful.

While I’m on my soapbox, natural isn’t a synonym for safe. 

For some reason the fragrance industry has developed this idea that natural means safe, and synthetic means dangerous. But, nature isn’t a regulatory body. Nature doesn’t care if something is poisonous. It makes poison ivy. Want to spray that on your neck? 

There is a persistent idea that a fragrance made from essential oils and botanical extracts is somehow inherently safer than one made with aroma molecules. Often, synthetic materials are created because the natural has been considered dangerous. 

A professional fragrance formula is not a morality play between good ingredients and bad ingredients. It’s a composition. 

I say all of this but I don’t want you to stop caring. I want you to care what goes on your skin and into your home. It just might not be as simple as it seems.