Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Miss Naomi's husband loves perfume

Zents is a natural line of fragrances

It's my wedding anniversary today, and my husband loves perfumes, but I rarely wear them. I feel bad for him because it seems like that would be an easy thing for a me to do to turn an ordinary day into a  romantic evening ... just splash on a little perfume. 

Riding the elevator for our anniversary dinner

Scents and perfumes can be a conundrum for me as I have a very strong sense of smell, and I sneeze easily. I consider myself "a canary in a coal mine." Smells may not bother others, but if they bother me I'm betting there is some toxic ingredient inside of them.  Many of the mainstream perfumes contain chemicals that are known to cause headaches or exasperate asthma. 

But for our anniversary this year, I actually asked my husband for a gift of perfume. It's from a company that I just learned about the other day while shopping in a gallery in Canal Park in Duluth. The company named Zents uses natural ingredients. 

There is a reason mainstream perfumes should bother me. According to the Environmental Working Group's Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, many of the ingredients used in perfumes are associated with hormone disruption and allergic reactions. 

I know one of the first things I noticed when I went from working out of my own home to working in a large office building was that many people wear perfume or cologne. 

Zents co-founder Cord Coen says in a statement on the perfume line: “Many people get terrible headaches near department store fragrance counters or can’t wear scent at all because of this sensitivity. But the light and pure essences of Zents make it tolerable for many of those people.”
http://www.safecosmetics.org/

According to the Environmental Working Group:

Some hidden hazards that may be lurking in products that contain synthetic fragrance include:

Allergens and sensitizers: One in every 50 people may suffer immune system damage from fragrance and become sensitized, according to the EU's Scientific Committee on Cosmetic Products and Non-food Products. Once sensitized to an ingredient, a person can remain so for a lifetime, enduring allergic reactions with every subsequent exposure. Fragrances are considered to be among the top five known allergens and are known to both cause and trigger asthma attacks.

Phthalates:  Most fragrances don't list phthalates on the label, but hide them under the term, "fragrance."

Neurotoxins: Chemicals that are toxic to the brain.

Synthetic musks: Research by the Environmental Working Group has even found synthetic musks in the umbilical cord blood of newborn U.S. infants.

I haven't had time to dig deeper to see if the Environmental Working Group has researched Zents, but my hubby gave me the gift this morning, and I dipped some fragrance on my wrists named Oolong and another named simply: Water.  I'm enjoying a pleasant wafting of fragrance coming up form my wrist as I type this blog post. No twitching nose or sneezing.

It's really a gift to both of us.

Read more about Zents written by Barbara Kessler on  Greenrightnow.com
 at  http://www.greenrightnow.com/mystateline/2012/01/30/get-healthy-scents-this-valentines-day/

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