Are we There Yet?

Received word that the EPA management now has the Environmental and Human Health Fragrance /ETF criteria to review. While this is pending, every effort should be made to decide WHO will build the data base, and when will the information be distributed, updated and open source to all fragrance creators, product formulators, NGO's, state EPA's, and retail chains that make green declarations.

WHO will actually make the effort to first meet, share goals, and publish data? It's been suggested by the Fragrance Technical Committee that RIFM (Research Institute for Fragrance Materials) and CleanGredients have an initial discussion. Both organizations have a charter to be useful and informative to their members. And can the FMA (Fragrance Material Association) contribute, whose members is the supply chain? These folk understand the impact. Why can't they publish a list?

Look, we know the fragrance consultants and third party reviewers are not going to give up information that generate fees. And we know the fragrance in-house regulators can only construct turducken system checks because they do not formulate.

In the meanwhile, fragrance houses will be using their GC to copy known DfE formulas that come from extractions or shopped compounds for improvement, Perfumers and some regulators will be privately circulating DfE approved material lists, PR statements will be released, IFRA will have published material lists as they pertain to EU REACH, sadly existing Institutional and Consumer products will continue to make sustainable, natural (or Organic), safe claims for Essential Oil blends that are environmental hazards all while the EPA is taking action steps regarding clean water and our deplorable water treatment capabilities.

Are we there yet? Are all the myths and past practices deconstructed enough to make sense for an industry that now, today, has merged data and criteria on human health and environmental concerns. It's not yesterdays news, it's tomorrows action that matters.

Happy New Year 2010.

Orcas

This Fall I attended a series of lectures by Brent Nixon. Perhaps the most compelling talk was on Orcas. This particular species is studied extensively from population statistics to pod structure and behaviors. Amazingly, nearly every Orca is observed whether it is transient or thrives in a resident pod. And every resident pod is matriarchal and ruled by the grandmother who survive up to ninty years.

What stuck me most is due to the effects of bioaccumulation, as they feed at the top of the food chain, adult females transfer up to 90 percent of environmental contaminants to their first born calf. According to Mr. Nixon, the result is 100 percent death rate. The following calves do fine and their mortality rate is more happenstance.

I looked for collaboration to the first born mortality statement. I also found scientist have been confounded for decades by the disappearance of calves and deducted to only count them in their population records after the calves were two years old.

How does one make sense of this? Do we resign our responsibility to let Orcas remain amusements for Sea World or "killer whale sightseeing rides?" Can we not see the sense that fragrance materials that are known hormone disruptor's or aquatic toxins might contribute to the Orca situation? Do we continue to negate these emerging chemical measurements when the solution is to simply revise our formulas now for fragranced products that are rinsed down the drain?

Mothers, would we be a trifle overwrought if our first grandchild does not survive their first year?