But the chemical ingredients are not the only concern for IFRA. Also some raw materials are found to cause allergies and health issues in small number of people. The fragrance companies can either remove them or finaly put a small label that says what they do. The accepted practice in the industry is that only new fragrances need to be totally IFRA compliant. The old ones can stay as they are, much in the way that you can still drive your old car on public roads though it has no airbags. Only with the slight difference that your old car one day will wear off by itself and solve the problem, while the old ( and potentially harmful !) fragrances are still in production and well received by the public.

Hence the tendency for the big perfume houses to modify their old "state of art" classic perfume formulas. According to Luca Turin ( and representing the vast group of perfumers around the globe):

"Three raw materials in particular are going to be removed altogether: coumarin, oak moss and birch tar. That alone means the end of Mitsouko and Shalimar, which will henceforth smell of Eau du Soir and Vanilla Fields respectively. Finding replacements for these materials is non-trivial. There is no good coumarin substitute. Putting together a decent synthetic oakmoss has been the perfumery equivalent of proving the Riemann Conjecture in mathematics. The greatest minds have tried and failed."

And the fair questions come to mind : Are these materials potentially so harmful? And if the answer is "yes" : Can't we be satisfied with a little label on the bottle instead of destroying the old classic perfume formulas?

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