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Cassidy Randall's picture

Have you ever wondered how your favorite cleaner gets that pine forest scent? Or the lemon-fresh smell that we associate with “clean”?

It turns out that the fragrance in your cleaning product is actually made up of hundreds of synthetic chemicals, which may be impacting your health. We’d like to introduce you to some of the worst offenders.

Meet galaxolide and tonalide. These two chemicals are synthetic musks often used to create those lovely scents in your all-purpose cleaner, glass cleaner, laundry detergent and other products. Galaxolide and tonalide are finding their way into our blood and breast milk, and they have even been detected in newborn babies. Why is this concerning? Synthetic musks:

  • Don’t break down easily in the environment
  • Build up in our bodies
  • Are linked to hormone disruption and increased risk of breast cancer
  • May make our bodies more vulnerable to other toxic chemicals by weakening our body’s defenses

Here’s the kicker. These chemicals aren’t necessary to get that lemon-fresh scent! Companies like Clorox (Formula 409®, Pine-Sol®, Tilex®) and Reckitt Benckiser (AirWick®, Lysol®, Old English®) make fragranced cleaners without synthetic musks.

But SC Johnson (Windex®, Fantastik®, Glade®, and more) continues to use galaxolide and tonalide in their fragranced cleaning products. And the company keeps these chemicals a secret from you by not listing them on the label.

The bottom line: these toxic chemicals are leaving SC Johnson products and entering our bodies without our consent.

Ask SC Johnson to remove synthetic musks from their fragranced cleaners!

Because fragrance should linger in the air, not in our bodies.


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