Emily Oster

2 minute read Emily Oster

Emily Oster

Is It Unsafe to Wear Perfume Around a Baby?

Q&A on potential endocrine disruptors

Emily Oster

2 minute read

I’ve been reading about the adverse health effects (endocrine disrupting, respiratory, possibly carcinogenic effects) of artificial fragrances from things like perfumes and cleaning products. This seems to be particularly concerning for babies and young kids, and we have switched to fragrance-free versions of 99% of our products at home. We just started sending our 1-year-old to school, and she comes home every day with her hair, clothes, and skin reeking of perfume from her teachers. How worried should I be that she is being exposed to strong perfumes for nine hours a day, five days a week?

—Fragrance-free

Perfume and fragrances are a complicated topic. They are, on one hand, everywhere and a part of our life in a million ways. And on the other hand, there are panic headlines all around suggesting that these fragrances have negative health consequences.

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The concern about fragrances stems from a couple of directions. First, some people are very sensitive to them. They find artificial fragrances unpleasant, or irritating to asthma or other respiratory issues. Second, and more broadly, many fragrances are thought to have the potential to impact the endocrine system. 

This is because some of the chemicals found in fragrances are endocrine disruptors. “Endocrine disruptor” is a term for any chemical that is thought to interfere with hormones. This may happen because, for example, they “look like” the chemicals that turn hormones on and off. Fragrances have a relatively high concentration of this type of chemical.

Despite the identification of these endocrine disruptors, it is not actually clear the size of health effects. There is speculation that higher rates of these chemicals impact fertility, for example, but definitive links there (or even strong and robust correlations) have not been drawn. Fundamentally, this is an area that deserves further study, but the evidence we have so far definitely isn’t definitive.
For this reason, I would not panic about your day care teachers. Eliminating fragrance in your own home seems reasonable, in part because there is really no reason to have it. But this doesn’t seem to me a reason to move away from a day care that is otherwise great.

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