Procter & Gamble Stepping Up Fragrance Transparency

WASHINGTON – Procter & Gamble, the world’s biggest maker of both household cleaning and personal care products, announced Wednesday the most sweeping fragrance ingredient transparency initiative to date, said EWG President Ken Cook.

By 2019, the Cincinnati-based company will begin online disclosure of fragrance ingredients – down to 0.01 percent of the product – for all its products and lines sold in the U.S. and Canada, according to the company’s news release. Procter & Gamble will first offer consumers details about the fragrance ingredients for Tide purclean laundry detergents, Herbal Essences shampoos, Febreze air fresheners and Olay skin care products.

“It is clear Procter & Gamble is listening to its customers and consumers overall, who have called for more transparency of ingredients in household products,” said Cook. “Because of the company’s sheer size and market share, P&G’s sweeping initiative could be the domino that triggers similar actions from the rest of the industry that has not yet embraced this level of transparency for fragrance ingredients.”

Cook noted that in its 25 years, EWG has been at the forefront of chemical ingredient disclosure in consumer goods, believing people have the right to know what is in the products they purchase and use on themselves and in their homes.

“We applaud P&G for its commitment and leadership in taking these significant steps towards giving the public more information about ingredients, and we predict other companies will soon follow suit,” Cook added.

In 2004, EWG launched its Skin Deep® online safety guide for cosmetics and personal care products, the first-ever effort to give consumers easily accessible information about the potential hazards associated with chemicals in the products they use every day and point them to products with fewer ingredients of concern. Today, the searchable database rates more than 70,000 products.

EWG followed up in 2012 with the online Guide to Healthy Cleaning, scoring products on both the harms associated with ingredients and on transparency. Today, the database houses detailed information and safety ratings for more than 2,500 products.

In 2016, Skin Deep saw roughly 8.6 million visits and the cleaners guide had more than 1.5 million visits, demonstrating the importance consumers place on arming themselves with ingredient information for products before shopping.