Many small soap companies falsely claim their soaps are "organic" or "all natural." Hopefully they make such claims out of simple ignorance about what those terms actually mean, because the alternative is that they DO understand the terms, and are willfully lying to you.
Here's the opening article in this series. It will give you more information on this widespread problem, and reasons why we at C&L Soaps want to set the records strait.
NOTE: There is nothing fraudulent about using fragrance oils, other than the obvious trademark infringements of some fragrances that are formulated and named after commercial perfumes. Further, used in the correct proportions in soaps, fragrance oils are not unsafe. However, calling soaps "all natural" or "organic" when they contain fragrance oils, is (in our opinion) illegal, or at the least, extremely dubious. Doing so is certainly misleading to the public, if nothing else. A few of C&L's products contain fragrance oils, and we always disclose this in our "percentage of natural" listing, and never claim they are "organic" or "all natural".
NO HANDMADE HARD BAR SOAP IS ORGANIC. Many small soap companies claim their product is organic. IT IS NOT, for the simple reason that all handmade hard bar soap is made with sodium hydroxide (lye) and there is no source of organic sodium hydroxide. All sodium hydroxide lye is man made, therefore any products made with it cannot, by law, be advertised as "organic."
There are two ways most small soap companies add fragrance to their soaps - by adding Essential Oils or Fragrance Oils. Essential oils are usually natural, and may be organic, depending on the process used for extraction. They are derived from plant materials. Fragrance oils are not organic or natural. They are made from man-made chemicals that most of us cannot pronounce.
Most small handmade soap companies purchase their fragrance oils from the same handful of companies, and many of them name their soaps after the fragrance oils they use. So, it's easy for us to find their sources, and look up their official Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) which lists all the ingredients.
In this series of articles we will disclose the official government warnings about some common fragrance oils, and their true ingredients. If your soap company has a soap named similarly to any of these fragrance oils, there is a very good chance that the soap contains all these chemicals.
Aqua di Gio Fragrance Oil
This fragrance oil is a rippoff of the popular Giorgio Armani scent, Aqua di Gio. It is neither natural nor organic, so no product made with it can legally be called "organic", and should not be called "all natural."
Warnings:
H227 Combustible liquid
H302 Harmful if swallowed
H313 May be harmful in contact with skin
H315 Causes skin irritation
H317 May cause an allergic skin reaction
H319 Causes serious eye irritation H333 May be harmful if inhaled H400 Very Toxic to aquatic life
H411 Toxic to aquatic life with long lasting effects
Contains:
Benzyl Benzoate
Hexyl cinnamaldehyde
Linalool
3,7-Dimethyl-1,6-nonadien-3-ol
Methyldihydrojasmonate
Linalyl acetate
Citrus medica limonum (Lemon) peel oil
Hexamethylindanopyran
Citrus nobilis (Mandarin Orange) peel oil
Acetyl cedrene
Tetramethyl Acetyloctahydronaphthalenes
Butylphenyl Methylpropional