Are Candles Bad For You?
Introduction
Candles are an amazing melody of fuel and flame that bring forth wondrous scents which we fill our homes with.
They’re also a burn hazard emitting “stuff” into the air, the characteristics of which aren’t always clear. Candle makers use chemistry to construct them – melting down wax and blending it with color and fragrance oil before allowing to harden again around a wick.
Are candles bad for you?
Should we be concerned with the emissions into our homes from this humble light?
The latest concern in candle health is the effect of fragrance.
Fragrance companies “hide” their ingredients in many cases, leaving consumers in the dark about what exactly is inside. People have burned candles for a long time, but our world is more informed and concerned about the environmental impact these items have, and want more transparency for what’s inside a “fragrance”.
Similar to perfume and soap development, candle scents come from fragrance oil.
When a candle burns it sends particles of the fragrance into the air. Waxes and wicks have gone through scrutiny, but what’s the big deal with fragrance oil?
Phthalates.
Phthalates are a common ingredient in fragrance oils that disperse into the air when candles burn (if included in the fragrance oil used to make the candle).
Are phthalates harmful or toxic?
Yes and no.
In this guide you’ll learn:
- How phthalates are used in fragrance oil
- What various research shows about their impact on human health
- How the candle market has responded
- Whether phthalates make candles bad for you to burn in your home
Let’s dive in!
The Fragrance Industry
Most fragrance oils contain some version of the following items:
- Aromatic chemicals (produced in a lab to provide a characteristic scent)
- Essential oils (extracted from nature… plants mostly)
- Chemical reaction agents (solvents, diluents, etc)
- Synthetic compounds (alcohol, carrier oils)
Fragrance oil is an enormous underpinning of the cosmetic industry. The FPLA requires cosmetic products to include an ingredients list. This is the same Act that controls what you need to include on your candle labels. The FDA allows classification of fragrance ingredients as “trade secrets” to help protect market competition.
Allowing companies to hide ingredients as a “trade secret” makes it hard to understand the potential health impacts of those fragrance ingredients. No government agency enforces or sets safety standards for fragrance chemicals, rather safety guidelines and bans are led by the International Fragrance Association (IFRA).
The IFRA is a self-regulating global representative of the fragrance industry responsible for setting safety guidelines and product information. They use data from the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials (RIFM) to build standards and ensure ingredients are evaluated using good science.
Some organizations liken the IFRA and RIFM to the “fox guarding the henhouse” because it’s in their financial interest to protect the fragrance industry from disruptive or concerning information. It’s only important to bring up because there is potential motive for the IFRA to chime in on candle safety – it isn’t in their interest if fragrance oil ingredients makes candles bad for you.
Which is what makes the discussion about phthalates more interesting.
What the heck are phthalates?
Perhaps the single worst word you’ll read all week – phthalates are pronounced “THAL-ATES”. Maybe Webster can remove the first two letters for us next year – they’re completely useless.
Phthalates are a collection of chemical compounds. It’s more of a category, the way that “mushrooms” is a category. There are hundreds of different phthalates, all with various properties and uses.
Most phthalates are solvents in plastics manufacturing to make rigid plastic more flexible. All sorts of products use them across hundreds of industries. Unless listed on the package, you might not even know it’s present since it’s sometimes an ingredient for another ingredient.
It’s not really fair to classify all phthalates as equals. They come in such variety and serve such a diverse set of functions in manufacturing that substituting one for another isn’t really fair. Similar to mushrooms – not all mushrooms are suitable for cooking. According to the IFRA, only one type of phthalate is commonly used in cosmetics (fragrances): diethyl phthalate (DEP).
When used, DEP operates as a solvent in fragrance oils. Solvents enable materials that don’t normally blend together at room temperature to combine. Fragrance development requires this all the time because the ingredients don’t normally like each other without DEP. In that way, DEP is like your favorite aunt.
Without using DEP, smart chemical engineers have to resort to lesser alternatives, like vegetable oil, castor oil, or other weirdly-named chemicals (hello, isopropyl myristate and dioctyl adipate!). They’re normally not as good as DEP, which is why DEP is so popular.
…until fairly recently.
Some high-profile scientific studies found many of the other phthalates caused adverse health risks. Discovering how toxic these chemicals were, regulatory bodies across the world swiftly banned their use in a variety of manufacturing markets, namely children’s toys. Companies across the world are more interested in “phthalate-free” products where possible to avoid known health risks exposed by recent studies.
Marketing campaigns and industry chatter quickly characterized “phthalates” as dangerous ingredients, eventually raising the ultimate question about their use in fragrance oils next: Are candles that use fragrance oils containing phthalates toxic?
So... are candles bad for you?
Despite the usage of DEP (classified as a phthalate) in many fragrance oils, no evidence or studies have proven it to be dangerous or unhealthy.
That’s the short, surprising answer.
The drama around fragrance exists because DEP has many phthalate relatives who are proven health risks. Three better known ones are DBP (dibutyl phthalate), DEHP (diethyl hexyl phthalate), and DMP (dimethyl phthalate). Fragrance oils don’t contain DBP, DEHP, or DMP.
What the FDA says about phthalates
The U.S. Food & Drug Administration affirmed DEP is still used in cosmetics, but other phthalates aren’t.
“FDA reviewed the safety and toxicity data for phthalates, including the CDC data from 2001, as well as the CIR conclusions based on reviews in 1985 and 2002. While the CDC report noted elevated levels of phthalates excreted by women of child-bearing age, neither this report nor the other data reviewed by FDA established an association between the use of phthalates in cosmetic products and a health risk. Based on this information, FDA determined that there wasn’t a sound, scientific basis to support taking regulatory action against cosmetics containing phthalates.”
Under the law, cosmetic products and ingredients, with the exception of color additives, are not subject to FDA approval before they go on the market.
In 2013 the FDA stated they do not have evidence that phthalates as used in cosmetics pose a safety risk.
What the IFRA says about phthalates
The IFRA published a statement in 2005 declaring DEP is safe for use in fragrance. They liken phthalates to berries and mushrooms, stating that not all mushrooms are harmful even if some are toxic.
What the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (formerly the SCCNFP) says about phthalates
Long ago in 2003, when flash mobs were a thing, the SCCNFP released a second “opinion” on phthalates in cosmetics. This reaffirmed their first opinion from the previous year.
They concluded DEP is safe to use in cosmetics at the current levels. The SCCNFP provided the European Commission scientific advice on non-food items. The newest organization is the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety – the successor of the SCCNFP.
What the World Health Organization says about phthalates
The World Health Organization (WHO) published a document (Concise International Chemical Assessment Document) all about DEP and concluded there aren’t any issues of concern.
What the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about phthalates
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists DEP in their disease registry. Nowhere do they indicate a connection between DEP and cancer in humans or animals.
Conclusion
Transparency is important when it comes to ingredients because it enables a clear understanding of whether something might be harmful or not. Good science and studies are just as important.
The published research suggests there aren’t any dangerous phthalates in fragrance oils – only DEP which seems to be just fine for human health. That isn’t to suggest that all ingredients in candles are awesome – some people are very sensitive to common fragrance ingredients no matter what they are!
The candle fragrance industry responded to phthalates with gusto about ten years ago, reformulating ingredients in many fragrances to be “phthalate-free”. Candlescience actually overhauled their entire product line so nothing has phthalates anymore. Not all candle supply stores have followed suit, but many carry more phthalate-free products than before in response.
The result?
Long time candle makers can tell a difference with some fragrances because DEP was so effective. Removing DEP means something, or some combination of ingredients, has to take its place. This can be a variety of compounds, from glycol to iso propyl myristate, or even some alcohols – successful fragrance development still requires a solvent.
DEP was cost effective and usually believed to increase hot throw in many fragrance oils. Reformulations of these same fragrances caused a huge rift in some product lines as a result.
If candles are bad for you, there are many years of anecdotal evidence to suggest the opposite. People have burned candles for centuries and no strong studies or science has convincingly proven their danger to human health.
This doesn’t mean we should blindly accept and trust an industry as the sole source of truth on any matter. Consider that over 100 items on the IFRA Transparency List are considered toxic by many sources, including California’s Proposition 65 List.
If safety and protection of human health is a priority by fragrance users, there should be continued examination of ingredients, transparency, and scrutiny of how the IFRA and RIFM conduct themselves.
But as it stands, it seems candles are perfectly safe to burn.
What are you waiting for – GO LIGHT ONE NOW!
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