First things first: wtf does CMR stand for?
Glad you asked (or even if you didn’t, you’re about to find out). CMR is an acronym for carcinogens, mutagens + reproductive toxins 🤢. Or in other words, a bunch of nasty chemical substances that might just be floating around in the air you’re breathing right now... (gross).
Next question: how do CMRs get in my air?
Well for starters, even though they’re nasty, CMRs are actually allowed to be used at low levels in the US 😱. CMRs are masters of disguise, meaning even though they’re super bad for your health, they can still smell good. That’s why they’re usually found in traditional air fresheners. When it comes to the bigger air freshener guys, they like to make things fast + cheap. It takes a lot more time + money to make safer air care products by avoiding putting CMRs in the mix altogether, and someone over there decided your lung health wasn’t worth the extra effort 🙄.
CMRs are also found in + released from lots of other stuff like paint, furniture, candles, etc. ☢️ all of these just add to your exposure level, and increase your health risk.
The obvious q: if CMRs are so harmful, why are they allowed to be used?
We’ve been asking ourselves the same thing… consider the fragrance industry like the wild west. We have a sheriff 🤠 called IFRA, which is the international fragrance association. And this sheriff has safety guidelines in place when it comes to scent making. Problem is, IFRA is a self-governing body. Like any good sheriff, IFRA does what they can to keep “the town” nice + safe, but they try to do so by not stepping on any toes (and sometimes if you want to be disruptive, you’ve gotta make some waves 🌊).
While we do follow IFRA’s safety guidelines for fragrance, they let some of the nasty stuff slide, and that can add up fast. That’s why when it comes to our ingredients, the safest 💚 choice we can make is to simply forgo the use of any and all nasty ingredients, period.
Bonus question: does the FDA have anything to say about this?
Actually, even though it’s the year 2020, the FDA doesn’t even regulate the fragrance category 🧐. In categories it does regulate, like cosmetics, they only list a whopping 11 chemicals as harmful when used. Compare that to our friends overseas in Europe, where the EU has looked at the same list of thousands of chemicals and deemed over 1300 of them harmful when used. (Yeah, we were shook 😮 by that too).
Long story short, these chemicals are allowed to be used because the US hasn’t updated its safety guidelines in a hot minute 📋. And even though the FDA doesn’t regulate our category, we make sure to pick up the slack and do it for them when it comes to making our scents safer.
Ok, so what kinds of safety guidelines does Enviroscent follow?
We’re over-achievers here at Enviroscent, so naturally (pun very much intended 😅) we had to take our safety guidelines a step further. We already told you we follow IFRA’s safety guidelines and the EU’s cautionary lead, but we also hold ourselves to the EPA safer choice standard 🌱, which ensures the use of safer chemical ingredients in products without compromising quality or performance (rest assured, no performance issues here 😉 ).
So to wrap this up, we follow the safety guidelines of IFRA, the EU and the EPA safer choice standards, but we also have an Enviroscent standard, which goes even further for safety 👩🔬. Here’s the bottom line: if there’s an ingredient that might bring harm to you, your fur babies or the planet, (like CMRs) we avoid it like the plague. Because if we wouldn’t want to breathe it in ourselves, why should we expect you to? Scents made safer is our motto, and you can breathe easy knowing you’re getting safer, cleaner, nature-inspired 🌳 scents from us with every breath.