Our scent preference, naturally
and what a night at urgent care taught me
Early in my relationship with Emilie, we had an unforgettable date, although not for any of the reasons I had hoped.
After spending the day together shopping and going to lunch, Emilie started to slur her words and close her eyes. I knew she had migraine headaches but I hadn’t experienced the onset of one before. Emilie was clearly starting to feel pain and was panicked for what she knew was to come. She asked me to drive her to the nearest urgent care, and she knew that this migraine would be worse than usual.
Her pain intensified by the minute and there was nothing I could do. After enduring what felt like hours under the painful bright lights of the waiting room, she was finally seen and administered a hefty dose of Demerol to ease the pain. This helped, although Emilie would not be the same for a couple of days that consisted mostly of resting in complete darkness and silence.
How did this happen and what put her life on such a painful pause? Every migraine has a cause and this one was triggered by synthetic fragrance. We had been in a department store near the beauty section, and the intense mix of perfumes and colognes overwhelmed her system.
Before that day, I hadn’t had a single thought about fragrance since middle school (fragrances hadn’t crossed my mind since middle school) when every boy was briefly convinced that cologne was the secret to being liked by girls. (We all very quickly realized that cologne didn’t work, and that it probably had the opposite effect.)
It turns out that synthetic fragrance is one of the most common triggers for migraine attacks. In one clinical study, 70% of migraine patients reported odor as a trigger, and perfume was the single most common culprit, cited by over 75% of that group. For perspective, about 15% of people worldwide experience migraines. Among women, it's closer to 1 in 3.
Beyond triggering migraines, synthetic fragrance compounds are linked to hormonal and respiratory effects. Overall, 34.7% of the population reports health problems from exposure to fragranced products.
And it’s everywhere.
A landmark study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revealed that consumer products, including perfumes, hairsprays, and air fresheners, now contribute roughly half of all fossil-fuel-based volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions in major industrialized cities. Even though we burn far more gasoline than we spray perfume, fuels are burned in closed engines, whereas synthetic fragrances are designed to evaporate directly into the atmosphere. Once airborne, these fragrance molecules react with sunlight and other ambient chemicals to create ground-level ozone pollution and fine particulate matter, both of which are linked to chronic lung and heart diseases.
Our indoors environments are even worse. Data tracked by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) shows that synthetic fragrance chemicals are difficult to break down easily indoors. Instead, they linger heavily in indoor air currents and eventually settle into household dust, leading to inescapable, continuous secondary exposure via inhalation and skin contact.
Synthetic fragrance chemicals are so pervasive that they are no longer considered a personal choice. A nationally representative U.S. survey found that 99.1% of people are regularly exposed to fragranced products, whether from their own use, someone else's, or both. Institutions like UCLA now categorize synthetic air fresheners, colognes, and scented cleaners as indoor air hazards, citing research that some cleaning products carry lung-health risks comparable to regular cigarette exposure.
Guests are catching on.
Perhaps most relevant to our community, guests and consumers are voicing their preferences. The majority of U.S. consumers today seek natural products, citing synthetic fragrance as a top concern, just behind sulfates and parabens, and especially for skin, body, and hair care products.
Over 50% of the population would prefer that workplaces, health care facilities, hotels, and airplanes were fragrance-free.
Much of this momentum comes from the reluctance to go backwards once you experience a life free of fragrant chemicals. You start noticing synthetics everywhere. You start to feel annoyed that someone near you applied too much cologne or that your Lyft driver has an air freshener. In our world of constant stimulation, this is one more thing we don’t need assaulting our senses.
The case for natural
Alternatively, natural oils provide a wonderful range of scents that directly call back to our experiences in nature. As an example, if you think of strawberry candy as the synthetic option, we grow up thinking it’s delicious. As our tastes evolve, real strawberries become what we crave. If you visit France, you might find the much smaller, sweeter organic wild strawberries that taste like nothing you’ve ever experienced. Putting aside any health concerns, we find that leaning into the array of possibilities offered by nature offers more sophisticated, appealing results.
What initially gave natural oils a bad rap is their shorter lifespan as they break down and dissipate far more quickly than synthetics. This brevity is increasingly seen as a feature, not a bug. Natural oils provide a beautifully immersive shower experience without committing you to an entire day of smelling like your hotel’s chosen bath amenity or inadvertently offending those around you.
It is also now more possible than ever to duplicate a synthetic fragrance with natural oils. We are proud to have successfully made this change with many notable partners who wanted to maintain a guest-favorite scent identity while eliminating synthetic fragrance from their guest experience. In addition to these scent conversions, we hope our years in hospitality have encouraged more hotels and guests to embrace natural scent than otherwise would have.
And sometimes the best scent for an environment can be nothing. I recently walked into the lobby of a luxury coastal hotel excited to smell the fresh sea air but instead was hit by a wall of heavily perfumed air pumped out of the HVAC vents. Scent can elevate a setting, although, all too commonly, synthetic scents override the far more appealing scents of our natural surroundings.
My understanding of the differences between synthetic and natural scents came all at once thanks to an unfortunate night at urgent care. Society and the hospitality industry will surely not evolve this quickly, although growth in natural scent preference is on a one-way street that will only build with time.
Has scent come up in your guest feedback lately? I'm curious what you're hearing.
With appreciation,
Rob Hoyt
PRESIDENT, LATHER Custom
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