The Importance of SAFETY in Natural Perfumery

Validation in your chosen art form (natural perfumery) can come in many different forms, from finishing and launching a beautifully constructed perfume, to receiving glowing reviews from customers and writers. Nothing, however, feels quite as satisfying as running a tight ship -- er -- laboratory. 

Beyond the very basic safety rules applied to the creation of natural perfumes -- toxicity levels of certain materials, the IFRA's no-no list, and the occasional snag of the sleeve that results in the loss of an expensive, irreplaceable bottle of specially extracted oud oil -- there is a HUGE list of safety protocols, and equipment, that you, as a professional perfumer, need to pull together to be legit. Like OSHA-compliant, Health Department-compliant, eat-off-the-floor clean, and business certified. 

Real lab cred.

Protocols would include things like monthly sorting of citrus and other oxidizing materials to find out if they've passed their 'use-by' date. If they have (and honestly, you would already have this on a spreadsheet so you'd know before the cull) you have to toss them. But not in a bin or down the toilet. You have to think about what tossing in the trash and pouring down the toilet means for everyone who isn't you. Plus, laws.

This is the hard part. Have you seen the safety/hazards section of the GCMS for lemon oil? It is significant and scary. The fluid and vapor of lemon oil are flammable. If it catches fire, you have to throw sand or dry chemical extinguishers on it or use an alcohol-resistant foam.  It also catches fire via static electricity, so don't play the zap-it game in the lab. Put on the humidifier to knock it out (not the fire, the static.)

If you swallow it (so stop it, you weird multi-level marketing aromatherapy people!), it can be fatal if it manages to enter your airway. It causes skin irritation and allergic skin reactions, and it is toxic to aquatic life, so wear the safety gear -- lab coat, gloves, mask, eye protection, and whatnot, and don't flush it down the toilet or sink. 

You have to keep it out of the reach of children because when a kid gets this stuff on themselves straight from the bottle, it ain't pretty. I have a little anecdotal experience with this. Back when I worked in investigations, one of the employees/family members would bring her little boys to work with her. In every bathroom in the building was a bottle of citrus spray, industrial-strength orange oil to eliminate odor. One afternoon, the littlest boy went to use the toilet and decided to spray the orange oil straight up his bum. Yeah. The howling could be heard a block away, and I think blisters were involved. He was rinsed and rinsed and rinsed some more, then he was shuttled off to urgent care for some cream and a stern admonishment about spraying things up his bum.  

This is some seriously nasty stuff. If I had just told you about the cautions and not what the material was, you'd think I was talking about battery acid. 

So, if you have a laboratory with 300 or so raw materials, you have to keep in mind that each and every one of those materials have different protocols for general handling and waste disposal. 

And then there are the standards of cleanliness . . . for another time.