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IFRA Seminar: Fragrance in Our Lives
Introduction
Jean-Pierre Houri, the IFRA President introduced the proceedings to over 70 delegates. He outlined the role of IFRA as the global trade federation representing the fragrance industry. He explained the role of IFRA in ensuring the safe use of fragrances through its global safety program, which includes the Code of Practice the IFRA Standards and Compliance Program. The industry invests approximately 14 million US dollars on its research and safety program annually and ensures that the best science is available to the industry through the Research Instutute for Fragrance Materials (RIFM) and the evaluations of an independent Expert Panel.
Session One: The Scientific View
The Seminar was a chance to explore the different aspects of modern fragrance use. The speakers in the first session focused on subjects such as the effects of certain fragrance materials on our physiology and how to measure it, fragrance allergens in the general population and what life can be like without a sense of smell and how the condition of anosmia can effect people.
Professor Tim Jacob, from Cardiff University’s School of Biosciences gave the first presentation on the secondary benefits of odours. He explained the complex process performed by the olfactory bulb in relaying olfactory perceptions to the brain. He talked about his recent research into the beneficial effects that linalool and vanallin can have and how they can be measured. He said that simply looking at essential oils was not adequate and that in order to assess the huge potential benefits of odours it is necessary to look at single ingredients and how they interact with us.
The second speaker was Professor Thomas Diepgen from the University Hospital in Heidelberg. His talk focused on allergens in the general population, the current data available and data that he is working on through the Eden Epidemiological Study. He began by stating that the term ‘sensitive’ in a dermatological sense is very complicated and a lot of current data in the area of fragrance allergens is naturally biased because the data are collected from patients - people who are already sensitized. This does not help to give a true picture of fragrance allergies in the general population. In order to have a clearer picture an epidemiological study is needed.
Professor Diepgen outlined some preliminary results from a pilot study of the Eden Epidemiological Study, whose full results should be available in early 2011. The pilot study results showed a reaction in the general population of approximately 0.65%, which is much lower that previous studies have shown using patients in clinics.
The Eden Study will cover 5 European countries – Holland, Sweden, Germany (East and West), Italy and Portugal – taking in 15,000 subjects. The study is designed to assess the prevalence and severity of contact dermatitis and the avoidance of products in the general population through a standardized interview. It will also assess the rate of sensitization to fragrances through standard patch test procedures.
The Study is being performed in collaboration with the European Society for Contact Dermatitis (ESCD) and the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials (RIFM).
The final speaker of the first session was Professor Thomas Hummel from the University of Dresden Medical School. Professor Hummel is a leading authority on the condition of anosmia, the loss of the sense of smell. Our sense of smell is vital for daily activities like eating and drinking and also for things such as finding a partner, where the ability to smell a persons body odours becomes important. Profesor Hummel outlined that the sense of smell is integral to our ability to relate to our other senses. They are all linked. He explained that people who lose their sense of smell become depressed, their diet can be affected by either over eating or not eating enough and their sex drive lessens, mainly due to the depression.
There are treatments including surgery and drugs and in some cases acupuncture has worked as well as some courses of vitamins. However, research in this area is very limited considering how many people can be affected. Roughly 5% of the population will suffer from total smell loss and 20% will suffer from reduced loss. Almost everyone suffers some loss as they get older. However, training can improve our ability to smell by increasing the amount of receptors and expanding the olfactory bulb.
Session Two: The Perfumer’s View
The second session was a chance to hear from the professionals who take the knowledge from the scientific world of olfactory science and apply it in their professions as perfumers, responsible for enriching everyday products with the scents we adore.
The first speaker was Allan McRitchie, a former perfumer for household products at Procter and Gamble. Allan has worked on some of the world’s most famous brands such as Bold and Fairy Liquid and outlined to the delegates just how important the fragrance element is to the success of a product.
According to consumer research, explained Allan, the perfume can really delight consumers and has a big effect on the decision to purchase a product, especially in laundry products where it is a fundamental and multifunctional ingredient.
One of the most obvious benefits of a perfume in a laundry product is the sheer pleasure it brings to the user. The very first smell can evoke strong emotions and memories in the user helping to make an otherwise mundane activity a bit more pleasurable.
The brand equity that is developed over years for a product is also greatly enhanced by the fragrance. Many people feel quite passionate about the brands they use daily and do not like the fragrance to change. For example, the smells of Fairy Liquid and Savon de Marseille are not considered by their users as a perfume which is added, but the way the product actually smells.
The fragrance can also play an important role in replacing bad odours from a product. Not all the materials used in the manufacture of a product have a nice smell and so the fragrance is useful to provide a better user experience.
For laundry products it is very important to provide freshness to the items after they are washed. Most consumers want the fresh smell to last from the machine to the dryer, to the folding and then wearing. Technologies such as micro-encapsulation help to achieve this and provide the longer lasting freshness to the user.
To most consumers a fresh smell means clean and a good fragrance can be important to underline and reinforce the performance of the product.
A fragrance can also have a role in covering malodours. A fragrance molecule can ‘link’ with a malodour molecule and change its odour properties to make it either neutral or more pleasant and thus difficult to detect.
Finally, Allan talked about extra benefits that can come with a fragrance such as an antibacterial function, which can be achieved with clove oil for example. Some fragrance materials also have insect repellent properties, which can be a very useful added bonus to a product.
Overall, the fragrance, considering how small a component it is in a household product in terms of volume, is a very important element in the product’s ability to please and perform.
The final speaker was Laurence Fanuel, a perfumer and senior scientist with Takasago International and based in Paris. Laurence spoke about the connection of the senses and the more we can experience with all our senses the more reality we will experience. She explained the strong links to emotions and memories that smells have and the ability to bring to mind positive past experiences and feelings with a fragrance.
Since smelling is directly linked to our limbic system, the most primitive part of our brain, it was very important for survival purposes. Now we live in very different environments but the sense of smell is still directly linked to our warning systems, breathing systems, emotions, memories, and can cause direct physiological reactions.
The link to the sense of smell and our well-being is clear for Laurence. Through the activation of memories and emotions it can directly affect us psychologically and also physiologically through its interaction with our bodies’ receptors positively impacting our moods on cultural, personal and familial levels in particular.
To conclude Laurence talked about the role of fragrance creation as an art form. If art can be defined as a combination of elements exciting the senses, triggering emotions, stimulating thoughts why isn’t perfumery classified as an art form. She explained that it mixes a personal vision and technical know-how like many other art forms. Perfumery uses similar techniques to other art forms, such as overdosing. A film may overdose on one particular lighting technique or colour. A painting may overdose on one texture or style. Perfumery can do a similar thing by overdosing on one particular scent to create a ‘signature’ and then dress the fragrance up around it.
Laurence explained how she gets her artistic inspiration. She gathers it from diverse sources such as; places and her personal vision of the world, a beautiful or intriguing material, other art forms, products of all kinds, natural scents such as from cooking, competitor’s products, fine fragrances, the past and a passion for mixing unexpected things. As well as the creativity involved in perfume creation, she also explained the more practical elements; market data, product data, scientific data, safety data, costs, fashions, trends and consumer testing.
Laurence finished with the thought that the future will involve many more people living in more mega-cities around the world and therefore the need to manage the smells in our daily lives in such artificial environments will become increasing more important.
Panel Debate
Following the presentations the speakers took part in an open question and answer session with the delegates. One question asked about the ability to identify happiness or other effects in the brain created through scents. Professor Hummel explained that we can measure certain effects of scents on our physiology and ask questions, but was not sure the results could be defined as happiness per se. Professor Jacob suggested that specific reactions can be seen, which do suggest benefits in terms of mood and that techniques were developing all the time to improve this area of research.
Another questioner asked about the effects of scents on pregnant women in particular and if they are different to other women. Professor Hummel explained that there was no evidence for this but that it would be interesting to research. However, it is difficult because pregnant women cannot be subjected to the necessary tests such as MRI scans.
The perfumers were asked the importance of the fragrance formula to them and their profession and what would be the consequences of having to disclose the complete formula for each fragrance. Allan McRitchie explained that it would cause problems because a fragrance formula cannot be patented and is difficult to copyright and so keeping it a trade secret is the only viable option at present to protect the perfumer’s intellectual property.
More details:
To see the presenter’s slides and photographs of the event please click on the dashboard below.
Unfortunately the slides of Professor Thomas Hummel are not available due to copyright.
Soon there will be video clips of the event available to view and download from the video page.
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