27: Ingredient Transparency: In-Depth with a P&G Scientist

Narrator

How would you like to improve your health and keep your family safe? You're listening to the healthy home hacks podcast where we firmly believe enjoying optimal health shouldn't be a luxury. healthy home authorities and husband and wife team Ron and Lisa will help you create a home environment that will level up your health. It's time to hear from the experts. listen in on honest conversations and gain the best tips and advice. If you're ready to dive in and improve your well-being and increase your energy, you're in the right place. All right, here are your hosts, bow biologists, authors, media darlings, vicarious vegans and avocado aficionados, Ron and Lisa Beres.

Lisa Beres

As Baubiologists and for over 15 years, Ron and I have studied how the plethora of toxins found in homes today affect our health and the living environment. So, when we tracked miles through the corporate headquarters for a deep clean, deep science, immersion, and met face to face with some of the 500 scientists behind the Procter and Gamble company to discuss their product ingredients, we were all ears. No questions were off limits. And as you'd expect, we approached each conversation armored for possible battle and potential greenwashing. Now most of us have read Dr. Seuss The Lorax. Yes. But what followed suit was not a meeting with the one slur rather an up-close peek into a company that actually does care a whole awful lot, in fact, and we're going to tell you all about it today.

Ron Beres

Let me paint a picture. The P&G headquarters is a massive structure of buildings, a cornucopia of addresses, as you'd expect, but what we experienced was an intimate in depth look into what it takes for a company of this magnitude to research, test, operate and provide consumer products that do what they say at a price families can afford. Were there some areas that we'd like to see improvements? Absolutely, yes, we share these concerns loudly with several of the head scientists, toxicologists, and members of the marketing team, we plotted their efforts, but also expressed that we represent you the concern parent, wife, teacher, nurse, those of us who need to know the brands we trust genuinely care, and will strive to create products that don't pose harm to human health or the planet. They listened.

Lisa Beres

So, what began as a small soap and Candle Company in 1837 by two brothers in law has today grown into the world's largest consumer goods company. Some listeners may have preconceived notions about the integrity or lack thereof of corporate giants. We totally get it. But today we're going to clear the air so to speak. While we can't bring you to the Cincinnati based headquarters, we can bring one of the top P&G scientists to you today. Well, to your earbuds anyway.

Ron Beres

Our special guest is Morgan Brashear. Morgan is a Senior Scientific Communications Manager for the US Homecare brand at Procter and Gamble. For the past nine years, Morgan has worked closely with research and development to communicate scientifically backed products created to help families just like yours quickly and easily clean their homes. Morgan not only brings the science behind the products to life but publicizes their benefits to consumers through media and in market engagement.

Lisa Beres

Morgan studied at Indiana University where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in biology, chemistry, animal behavior, and psychology. Morgan lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her fianc� and we are so lucky to take Morgan away from the lab and wedding planning and out of her goggles to have her join us today.

Ron Beres

Welcome to the show. Morgan.

Lisa Beres

Welcome, Morgan.

Morgan Brashaer

Thank you so much, Ron. And Lisa, I'm happy to be here.

Lisa Beres

We are so happy to have you.

Ron Beres

We are so happy to have you, Morgan. But first a disclaimer. Okay, so this is not a sponsored podcast by P&G. Rather, in depth conversation with you, and we're going to get a better idea for our listeners as to what you guys are doing to make sustainable healthy benefits for the consumer. So, Morgan, let's dive right in. I know our listeners are thinking air fresheners. Why do I need an air freshener? I can just open my window. Why an air freshener Morgan?

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, so air fresheners really exist to address the unpleasant smells in your home and whether we want to admit we have unpleasant smells or not. They do exist and they can be caused by a number of different activities and issues. In the home, and what we call the mal odors, these unpleasant smells. And there's actually a cycle of how they travel throughout your home and how they stick around in your home. And the motorcycle itself is kind of interesting. So, we have a mal odor event or some event happens, some activity happens that introduces these stinky molecules into your environment. And so, it can be anything from your trash, it can be food spoiling, it can be cooking, playing with a pet working out, all of these introduce billions or even sometimes trillions of odor molecules into your air. And then what happens is they catch the natural airflow of your home. So, whether you have your windows open, and you've got a nice breeze coming in, or whether you have your heating and air conditioning running, there's always air flowing through your home. So, it's going to catch that airflow and these billions or trillions of molecules are going to travel throughout the home, it's a lot easier for them to get outside of the kitchen. If you're cooking something particularly pungent

Ron Beres

You don�t like the smell of our cooking Morgan?

Morgan Brashaer

Not yours in particular, I'm sure yours smells great.

Lisa Beres

Ours is a vegan smell.

Morgan Brashaer

Exactly. But you know, let's say for the non-vegans out there, maybe you're cooking fish or something that has a really potent smell, or you're cooking with some spices that are really fragrant, you know, more and more homes these days have open concept floor plans to so your kitchen isn't as closed off as it used to be, it's now opened up to your living space. And those odor molecules traveled, and then they embed into all of your soft surfaces. So, we think of our soft surfaces, the obvious ones, things like your couches, drapes, carpets, or rugs. But there are a lot of softer surfaces. Many wallpapers, bedding. Yeah, bedding for sure. wallpaper is even porous, or the grout line in between tiles. Wood is a porous surface. So, these odor molecules will embed into them. And then particularly those really comfortable squishy soft surfaces like the couch, as soon as you plop down on it at the end of the day and get cozy and want to watch a movie or something. When you plop down it reblooms all of those odor molecules into the air. And then they continue to circulate. So, what people don't realize is this is part of what gives each home its own signature scent. It's the combination of all of the odor molecules.

Lisa Beres

That's a nice way of putting it.

Morgan Brashaer

Both good and bad. So, you have the nice smelling things like maybe you brought in a bouquet of flowers. Maybe Ron bought you a bouquet of flowers.

Lisa Beres

That was a good little hint there.

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, and you have that nice fragrant floral smell. And then and all of the products you use throughout your home. But then all of those odorous activities like your gym bag you just worked out or things like that. They all kind of blend together and create that signature sense. So, you might go on vacation back when we could easily travel for vacations. And I know and then you come back and you think, Oh, it smells kind of funny in here. That's actually what your home typically smells like you just become a little bit used to it. And we call that nose blindness.

Lisa Beres

But you're right. I mean, we've all experienced that. Even if you go out shopping for the day and you come home, you're like, Whoa, I didn't notice that smell while I was in it. So, something we learned from your scientist was mal odor, I had never heard that term. And I love how you just called it stinky molecules. So that's, you know, just a great, easier way to think of it. So, there's odor and then there's mal odor, are they different? And can you elaborate more on what mal odor is? And are there negative impacts to that?

Morgan Brashaer

There absolutely are? That's a great question. So, odors can be anything that can be positive or negative. So, we try to call the bad smelling odors, Mal odors just to set them apart. Because odor is anything that you can smell really, you can have a good odor, you can have a bad odor. So, we do put the name mal odor on those bad smelling molecules, those stinky compounds. And there actually can be quite a few negative effects. They're not just annoying to smell something bad, or even slightly embarrassing. If somebody else were to smell it or even yourself, you can you can be embarrassed by your own smells around you. There was a recently published review article in the journal, Atmosphere, titled The Impact of Indoor Malodor, Historical Perspective, Modern Challenges, Negative Effects and Approaches for Mitigation, which addresses the negative impacts of these mal odors because they can affect your mood. They can affect your cognition, things like complex tasks like proofreading, there's been researched It shows when a when a bad odor is present. Your cognitive ability to tackle complex tasks drops significantly in the presence of mal odor. It can also have psychological harm, even physical harm and social and economic harm. Having mal odor present.

Ron Beres

So not to get off topic Morgan, I do recall the scientists talking about how sense themselves they go past the conscious mind, they go straight to the subconscious. So, they actually have you tap into an experience that you may have had, that you're associating with, that's bad or good. And you don't even know it at all. When you mentioned malodor, you know, I was like a song.

Lisa Beres

I mean, we're so multi-sensory, I guess, like a song can bring us back to our childhood or a moment and odors can do the same thing.

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, odors actually do it even more. So, because of the five senses, your sense of smell, is the only sense that the first place that hits in your brain is that center of emotional and memory is the emotional and memory center that it hits first. All other senses go to a logical part of your brain first, and then to the more emotional and memory driven center. But the sense of smell is directly linked to memories. And I know one of my colleagues gives a great example of when he was first learning about creating fragrances and things like that, he smelled one particular fragrance ingredient that immediately took him back to being at Disneyworld at the corner of Downtown Disney and there's an ice cream shop on one side and a chocolate shop on the other and you get this mix of sweetness. And that ingredient brought him back immediately. And that is that's really the power of your sense of smell. Right? Whether it's good or bad, you know, obviously, that was good for him.

Lisa Beres

I have a question that just off topic too. When you talked about you plop on the couch that we see the dust go up, right if the sun shining through, we get a beam of light, we can see Whoa, all this dust come up. And you talked about those odor molecules? Are they volatile? Are they airborne? Can we act can they attach to dust? Are they visible? You know in that way?

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, they can. And a lot of times they are invisible unless they're attached to something so sometimes you can see the heat from cooking something come off that that seam and condensation and sometimes, they'll travel along with that. But the odor molecules themselves are invisible. So, they'll either have the dust or the steam or something else there that it can that can travel with it could be odor molecules themselves are usually invisible to the naked eye.

Lisa Beres

Okay, so they're like little hitchhikers.

Morgan Brashaer

They are. Stinky hitchhikers.

Lisa Beres

So, I don't think many listeners are aware that and we weren't I know Ron and I weren't that the ingredients that P&G doesn't use within any of their formulated products. And I want to shed some light on this at the top of this show. And this would include their health care, skin, personal cleansing their hair care, their laundry, their home care and their oral care. And I'm just going to list some of the ingredients that P&G does not use that are probably going to knock your toxic socks off when you hear this: formaldehyde, alkylphenols an alkyl phenol ethoxylates benzene, Bisphenol A which we know as BPA, now that's not in formulas, heavy metals like arsenic, lead, chromium, mercury, cadmium, nickel, microbeads, organatins, PVC, that's polyvinyl chloride that is not in formulas, PAH�s which you�ve probably heard of, polycyclic, aromatic hydrocarbons, PCBs, polychlorinated bisphenols, phthalates which we all are familiar with these days, not in any new formulas, and triclosan and triclocarban. Guys, that's a huge list, which, for a company of this size, you probably expected those ingredients to be in there. So, I know we were really surprised that they don't use those. And what you also might not be aware of is that since 2017, P&G publishes the now publish now this is three years now publish their fragrance ingredients, down to 100 parts per million or point 01 percent for all of their fragrance products in the US and Canada. And this is done through a platform called Smart label in North America smart label, you can literally put in any product name and pull up a list of the ingredients. So, going back to fragrance, which is a big topic for our listeners, tell us what exactly fragrances You did such a good job explaining odors and molecules. Let's go into fragrance now.

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, so fragrance. fragrance is kind of fun because it's this true marriage between art and science. So, on the science side, you have chemistry, you have to understand how all of the ingredients react together. To form the fragrance you're looking to create, you have physics, you need to understand how they can actually be dispersed into the room, how they travel. And then you have biology also, you have to understand how those fragrance ingredients interact with the human body, how we perceive them, how they interact with scent receptors in our nose to create this, the scent that you're trying to achieve. The art side of it is inspiration, creativity design, it's where you can actually create a more of a recipe or a work of art by creating a fragrance. So just as an example, when you smell a rose, stop, you know, stop on the side of the road and smell a rose from a bush, you're actually smelling over 250 chemical compounds, but only about 40 of those compounds are integral parts that define the actual smell of a rose.

Ron Beres

They're like the fingerprint, right?

Morgan Brashaer

The fingerprint, exactly, yes. Yeah. So, you don't even realize you think, Oh, this is this is a rose. It's one ingredient. It's rose, you know, but really, it is it is over 250 chemical compounds. And I think I think that's something that we tend to take for granted because the word chemical gets such a bad rap. But in in reality, everything. On the in the world, every water is a chemical, yeah, water, the air, we breathe the vegetables in our garden. And literally everything in the world is made up of chemical compounds. So chemical by itself is not inherently good or inherently bad. It's the safety profile of that chemical that makes it good or bad, or makes it healthy or unhealthy for you.

Lisa Beres

So, you're right. If we saw if we got a list of a rose, the 250 compounds, we'd be like I'm not using that.

Morgan Brashaer

Exactly, right. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So, whenever you're creating these fragrances, you want to think about how they are going to be perceived end to end. So, you want to think about each individual ingredient that goes into it. So, both the natural essential oils that act as ingredients, also the human made ingredients, how they all work together to create an actual perfume itself. And then you want to think about the notes and a chords that build that. And then you want to think about that in terms of a finished perfume all together. And then if it's going into a consumer product, if it's going into a dish soap, or an air freshener, or a cleaning product, those are all going to have different interactions with the ingredients in the finished product itself. So, you want to make sure you're designing from that point of view. And then finally, when it's being used, so depending on how it's being used, if it is being sprayed into the air versus rubbed onto your skin and everything in between. and you have to think through the way to build a fragrance that is delightful across the board between top notes, middle notes and bottom notes and bass notes.

Ron Beres

Can you explain that top note?

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, absolutely. The top notes are what gives sort of the first impression of a fragrance. So right when you smell it, the top notes are what's kind of evaporating off the fastest. They're usually kind of the lightest fragrance, but they're what you get immediately. And then those middle notes are really the heart of the fragrance. That's where the majority of what defines a fragrance is built into the middle notes. And then you have the base notes which have a little bit more of a supporting role.

Lisa Beres

This sounds like a film.

Morgan Brashaer

That's best supporting role.

Lisa Beres

Best supporting chemical.

Ron Beres

Maybe extra. Yeah,

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, they have a little bit more of a supporting role. They're not exactly the fragrance notes that you think of when you smell it, but they help make it more rounded, more well-rounded. And they also tend to linger the longest. So, I mentioned those top notes evaporate off the fastest, those bass notes are going to stick around the longest. So once everything else has evaporated off or you don't smell it anymore, you're going to be left with the bass notes typically, so you want to make sure that they also smell really nice on their own.

Ron Beres

You work on for breeze at P&G years ago, I saw commercial and how the odor molecules are captured in the air. They're encapsulated brought to the ground and they're taken care of. I have to tell you; I've rolled my eyes every time I've seen that commercial. I don't know how it works. Explain to us what you explain. We're on site there and how that process goes.

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, I would love to because that really is for breezes, equity and what makes it different a lot of times in the air freshener space is the true odor elimination technology that is built into the formulation. So, we use a combination of ingredients in order to capture eliminate the most mal odors that we can. Because at the end of the day, we want to provide accessible and affordable solutions to consumers for eliminating those bad odors in their home. So, first ingredient, probably most common ingredient we can think of is water. So, the role it plays is that it is the conduit to get the rest of the ingredients into the air onto the fabrics, whatever it is you're spraying. So, we use water because it is gentle, because it evaporates readily. And it just makes it the easiest to get the mal odor elimination technology to those in contact with those now loaders. But really our hero odor elimination ingredient is something called cyclodextrin. Which kind of sounds scary, if you don't know what it is.

Lisa Beres

Sounds like sci fi movie.

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, or the villain in one or something. But it isn't at all. It's actually just a starch ring. So, it is a doughnut shaped molecule that is derived from corn. And what it does is it has this vacant center in the middle, that middle of the donut, where it traps now odors. And so that's that encapsulation that you were talking about Ron that you see in the in the commercials. That is that's the hero ingredient, because it captures mallow odor malodor, it captures mal odor molecules in the center and locks them away. So, you cannot smell them anymore. When that happens, the molecule itself gets heavy, and it falls to the floor just as you mentioned, run, and then it'll just stay there without being smelled until you clean your floors as normal until you sweep, vacuum mop, whatever it is, and that will remove the molecule, that compound itself.

Lisa Beres

So that process is very nontoxic and natural, right? I mean, it's a cornstarch base. That's amazing.

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, it's derived from multiple different starches. But you know, can be from potatoes, we get most of ours from corn. And it's used in a lot of different industries for a lot of different purposes. It's actually used in water purification, because it can also trap impurities in water in its center. It's used for drug delivery, in the in the healthcare field, all sorts of different uses for cyclodextrin. And yeah, to your point, it's a starch ring.

Lisa Beres

Okay, that's really interesting. And I think Ron, when he went back to rolling his eyes, it was because you know, like so many, we, you know, we had the impression that air fresheners do not actually eliminate odors, so they just mask odors, right. And that's just the thing we always hear it just masks so to hear that. And I know we were really surprised when I heard that from our scientists to know what actually is trapping it and removing that odor.

Morgan Brashaer

It is and that's probably one of the biggest misconceptions in the air care category is that air fresheners just mask, they're just spraying something else into the air. So, you're smelling it instead of the of the malodor. But we really do incorporate technology into our fragrances and into our ingredients to make sure that we can tackle them because we want it, we want it to be almost like noise cancelling headphones, for your nose. So instead of having this sensory overload of the bad smell, plus a flowery smell that's almost sometimes worse than just the bad smell.

Lisa Beres

You�re right about that. That meant so it's a good point. Yeah. We�ve all experienced that. Because I'm guessing, Morgan, competitors of yours is that are they using just a scent of synthetic fragrance that's being sprayed out? Is that technology unique to you?

Morgan Brashaer

Well, it cyclodextrin itself is proprietary to Febreze for the purpose of eliminating odors. Okay, I mentioned it's used in a bunch of different other industries but it is proprietary to us. And it's one of the things that when we launched Febreze in 1999 that was the basically the only odor elimination technology that we formulated into the product itself because at that time when we launched for breeze It was really the purpose of the product was to address smoke odors. If you think back to 1999 restaurants still had a smoking in a non-smoking area which is crazy to think it was only you know that recent in our past when that was still a thing. So even if you yourself were not a smoker you would you would end up with secondhand smoke and things like that the smell of smoke on your clothing sometimes.

Unknown Speaker

Or on your hair.

Morgan Brashaer

Oh my gosh. Yes. And Febreze actually was originally intended to be bad order that we were really going after was that smoke odor. And so cyclodextrin is really great at capturing smoke odor. And so that was the only odor elimination technology. Now since then we know that people don't just use it for smoky odors on their clothing or their hair, we know that the incidence of smoking has thankfully, decreased significantly. And also, there are other odors, that and other uses for the product in your home that we have about, you know, developed new odor elimination technologies to address those odors. So, things like citric acid is another ingredient we use, excuse me, we use citric acid or sodium citrate to be a pH buffer. So citric acid things that are found in lemons in your citrus fruits. And we just want to use that to neutralize the pH of stinky odors and bring them to neutral, bring them to a pH of seven. That's the pH of water and it doesn't smell. So, you might be familiar with this, if you've ever eaten, and probably not the two of you, necessarily, but maybe some of your listeners if you've ever eaten a particularly fishy.

Lisa Beres

We used to eat fish, so yeah.

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, so you might squeeze a lemon on your fish to help neutralize the fishy taste. That's the exact same thing that citric acid is doing in our formulation is it's neutralizing that fishy or that bad odor and bringing it to a neutral pure initial.

Lisa Beres

Okay, so going back to fragrance, are there any other purposes to having fragrances in a product besides the smell besides smelling nice?

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, and that's, again, one of the biggest misconceptions is that it's just fragrance, it's just a smell. So, there are multiple reasons that people or companies might formulate fragrance into their products. The basic, the most basic of them is to cover up any base odors in the product itself. So, if you have an unscented version with no fragrance in it at all, some of those raw materials and those raw ingredients can have kind of a bad smell to them.

Lisa Beres

That�s interesting. I was going to ask you that if that would have. Okay, so it does it have like a chemical or?

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, it can. It can it depends on what it is. But if and you've probably used some unscented cleaning products and things like that, but you can still smell something to it. Even though a fragrance isn't added the raw materials that go into it, even if you're cleaning with vinegar or something like that it has a smell, and that might be unpleasant to the person using it. So sometimes companies� products will incorporate a fragrance just to cover up that base odor. From a very basic point of view, kind of the next order would be to encourage proper use of products. So, a lot of times fragrance is the signal that something is clean that that clean smell that's associated with it. So, if you have that positive reinforcement of that positive reminder with the fragrance, you're more likely to properly use a product as its intended. It can also be designed for functional benefits. And that's a lot of what we use. When we are formulating for breeze those functional benefits like mallow odor removal. So, we have specific fragrance ingredients incorporated into the formula of the fragrance that bind to odor molecules. So, they actually form a they collide in the air they form a bond a chemical reaction occurs and it turns that odor essentially into its salt form and releases water. So, it's chemically changing the structure of that molecule so it's no longer the same thing. And those ingredients are formulated into the fragrance itself. And then finally, fragrances provide experiential benefits. So, people will get mood boosts from certain fragrances you know, you might smell something citrusy and feel energized or you might have a lavender or Eucalyptus smell and feel calm or relaxed. So, it has these experiential benefits to it for the end user. And just to provide delight for the product.

Lisa Beres

Yeah, just the pure joy. Now do you find in unscented products do they sell less than scented products?

Morgan Brashaer

100 percent.

Lisa Beres

Like if you something labeled unscented?

Morgan Brashaer

I know we get we get asked all the time. Can't you just make an unscented version of this? And we have to say, we do. You just don't find it. You can't find it very many places because it isn't a bit very big seller.

Lisa Beres

So that's interesting. Yeah, but we really interesting point. Yeah, if you're listening and you want more unscented products, then you�ve got to demand them. You know? That's because you guys will respond to consumer demand. Right?

Morgan Brashaer

Absolutely. Yeah. And we do make an unscented, a completely fragrance-free Fabric Refresher, which also goes back to that odor elimination technology in our products. If it was only masking, and we didn't include a fragrance in it, it would that bottle will be water, it will be completely pointless. But it is a testament to the true odor elimination technology in the product when you can use the completely fragrance free unscented Febreze Fabric Refresher, and eliminate the bad odors in your home. Even if you don't want to add additional fragrance into your environment.

Lisa Beres

I love that. And I know you came out also with a light version, which I've seen later since bamboo and these different types of scents that are later not as heavy fragrance.

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, we try to we try to formulate for you know, wherever people fall on the spectrum of scent, because we know that some people don't want heavy or overwhelming scent, they don't want it to dominate their environment. So that's why we designed our light lineup. It's bamboo, lavender and a sea spray. And they are really, really light there, they are still noticeable, but very, very light. And then we have our bass lineup for kind of that moderate amount of scent. And then we know that there are people on that scent spectrum that want a lot of scent. They're scent seekers they want, you know, they, they really enjoy it. And so, we have our Unstoppables line directed at the people out there that do want a whole lot of scent around them.

Lisa Beres

So, fragrance can be a very taboo word as we know for many people, especially those with allergies and chemical sensitivities. And the reason we're having this conversation today with Morgan scientists from P&G is to kind of break down what is going on in the products and find out what the ingredients actually entail. And a lot of people listening probably are not aware that P&G has excluded over 140 ingredients from their fragrances. Now, guys, that's more exclusive than the list of ingredients banned by the International fragrance Association. So, I do want to say that. So, Morgan, what are some of the common misconceptions around fragrance?

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, that's a great question. There are two that come to mind immediately for me. Number one is that companies are hiding bad ingredients behind the word fragrance, you know, this this misconception is rightfully directed because for a very long time, companies like P&G companies in general, weren't necessarily disclosing the fragrance ingredients. And they would just, we would just simply have fragrance as the ingredient. And so, it's easy to think the worst and when you don't know what is actually in it. So, you know, historically how we've addressed transparency. It's easy to question it. But as you mentioned earlier, since 2017, we've disclosed all of our fragrance ingredients down to 100 parts per million on smart label so that we are giving transparency to the people who really want to know, what are these ingredients? Because we're not we're, you know, the purpose of not disclosing in the past was not because we were trying to hide anything, it's because it wasn't being asked of us from the general population, people were as interested in knowing exactly what was in it. But then once people started asking, you know, and that that was something to that if it wasn't being asked, we could consider it a little bit of a trade secret. We could craft our fragrances that were proprietary to us. And we wouldn't have the threat of competition, trying to replicate them. So that was really the main goal in not openly disclosing.

Lisa Beres

And Procter and Gamble was one of the pioneers in releasing that ingredient transparency, correct.? A lot of companies have come on board now with a new bill requiring some of that, but you guys actually were doing it even before that was required. Is that correct?

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, yeah, that's correct. Again, it goes back to what the consumers are asking for, we really, at the end of the day, want to make sure that we are providing not only products, but information that is helpful to our consumers, the people who want to use our products and want to eliminate the odors in their home, but want to do it safely and make sure that they are taking everything like that into consideration. And so as soon as we started hearing that that's something that our consumers wanted. That's when we started pushing forward saying, this is something we need to do we need to be transparent about this because people want to know now people are more educated than ever before people know more about the ingredients. And even if, you know they look like that's a scary chemical name. A lot of times there's a quote unquote street name, you know, am I Be this this scary sounding name, but it might just be, you know, vitamin B, or something is how we know it.

Lisa Beres

Sodium hypochlorite is bleach. Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda. Yeah, that sounds scary when you hear it.

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah. So that's one of the biggest misconceptions is that, you know, if we hadn't been transparent in the past, because we were hiding bad ingredients behind that. The second biggest misconception is that around fragrance specifically is that natural always equals good. And synthetic or human made always equals bad. And I know that that is particularly a tough, a tough concept to get around. Because, you know, I completely understand how the natural option seems like it would always be the better option. But there are lots of natural ingredients. And I know, poison ivy is a good example of a completely 100% natural thing that I don't think anyone would consider to be safe, necessarily. So, you know, mushrooms are another example. There are certain mushrooms that are toxic if you consume. And then there are other mushrooms that are completely delicious and wonderful for you. So, the source of an ingredient doesn't determine whether it's good or whether it's bad. Regardless of the source. It is the safety profile of the ingredient that determines whether it's safe or unsafe for you.

Ron Beres

So synthetic versus naturals is what you're getting at?

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, okay. Yeah. And there are situations to a lot of what we craft is a combination.

Lisa Beres

You do both right? You use essential oils in some of the products, right?

Morgan Brashaer

Absolutely, yes, majority of our fragrances are a combination of both essential oils and synthetic ingredients. And it's all determined, it's all it's all determined by the safety profile of them how they work together in a product. And we do have a really, really strict safety assessment process that we go through with every single ingredient, whether it is a fragrance ingredient, or a core formulation ingredient, whether it's sourced directly from nature, or whether it's created, crafted in a lab, everything goes through the same stringent safety assessment process before it's ever considered, okay to experiment with in a formulation. And so, you might think, Well, why would you ever use a lab made ingredient? And for us, there are there are three reasons why we do first and this seems maybe counter intuitive, is for safety. Sometimes there can be impurities that come along with just sourcing directly from nature. And if we create a nature identical compound in the lab, your body recognizes it as exactly the same compound, your body does not distinguish whether it was made in a lab or made or sourced from nature. But we're able to filter out any of the impurities that would come with sourcing that particular ingredient directly from nature.

Lisa Beres

Wow, that's so interesting, like a bioidentical hormone?

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, exactly like that. Yeah. So, we call them nature identical, because at the end of the day, when you look at the chemical structure of the compound, it is identical there is there is no difference between that Okay, yeah. So that's one reason. The second reason is for sustainability purposes, just because of the scale of our products, how much product we produce, and ship out worldwide. For a lot of ingredients, it is not actually the sustainable choice. For us to source directly from nature, I know that there is a stat from my colleagues in fabric hair that if they only used 100%, lavender essential oil in all of time, for example, they would wipe out the world's supply of lavender in essentially one run of the product just because of how creative and so that is, you know that that comes down to you know, we're always looking at the safety profile, but we're also always looking at the sustainability of creating our products as well. And that's one where it might not seem obvious that creating something in the lab is the sustainable choice, but when you think of the resources that the earth actually has, sometimes it is the product itself. And then the third one I said that I mentioned that there were three reasons why we might. The third reason is for consistency. Because natural ingredients can morph from season to season, you know whether it was a rainy season or a drought, you can yield different results from the natural crop itself. We see it in agriculture. We also see it in things like essential oils taken directly from a flower or a plant. So, to make sure that our products are consistent and very much the same, from one batch to another, that's the third reason that sometimes we will choose to formulate with human made.

Lisa Beres

Almost like integrative. When you think of integrative in the medical field, it's integrating, like, Eastern and Western medicine. So, it's almost like what I'm hearing is, hey, we aren't abandoning, you know, the natural stuff, but we're using modern technology and kind of like trying to find that, that happy space in the middle, right?

Morgan Brashaer

Right, and you will see some of our smaller products because, you know, I, I'm scientists in our home care, you know, organization, so dish care, air care, and surface care, but you'll see across all of our different categories, sometimes you will find some of our smaller products that aren't as big as something like tide or for breweries, that does have 100% essential oils, because we're able to, in that in that circumstance, so yeah, so when we can we do, but it's just not always the right, the right choice for us. But ultimately, at the end of the day, we're still not putting just whatever we want willy nilly into those ingredients, they still have to pass very stringent safety protocol.

Lisa Beres

That was that was one of the things I think Ron and I, you know, were really impressed with and really took away from the immersion at your headquarters was just the amount of detail and you know, we met with so many scientists, and the toxicologists and the perfumers and all, you know, your whole team, you guys were incredibly transparent, you didn't hold anything back and really give us a peek into this side of, say, technology that we are aware of, and I'm really glad that we got to see that and hopefully, listeners are, you know, getting this to an understanding, you know, like you said, these are the big evil, you know, entities trying to poison you and your family.

Ron Beres

And there was such a high level of detail to when you go there to the facility, and you saw the dozens of dishwashers and the dozens of washers and you're watching the people testing on a consistent, all sorts of things.

Lisa Beres

Malodors on the shirts. Yeah, it was really vigorous testing was like, Whoa, yeah.

Morgan Brashaer

I wish I wish we could bring all of your listeners into our headquarters, that would be my ultimate dream. That would be incredible. And hopefully one day we can, you can probably fit everything. Yeah, it's a good facility. It's a big facility. But that I mean, it that means a lot to us as a company. And to me, in particular, to hear you guys say that because we know your level of knowledge in this space. And we know your level of skepticism and the rigor that you put behind investigating some of these things.

Morgan Brashaer

That makes me so happy to hear that we were able to bring you in, give you a behind the scenes look and really shift that that perception of what maybe is going on behind the scenes Because ultimately, that's our goal for everyone. And I think it's something that we've kind of kept too close to our chest for too long. And we want people to know we want people to be aware of it.

Lisa Beres

And if you're literally not hiding anything with this ingredient transparency and there are so many products. I wrote a company blog post and featured some of the products that you know, we deemed like very nontoxic, including some new lines that you guys are rolling out that do use vinegar, and laundry and pretty incredible. And so, at the end of the day, you have a choice you guys listening, you have a choice, you can use their products you cannot you can look for they're more, quote unquote, healthier versions, the unscented versions and those things. So, you have choice and if you guys want to see more of that than just demand it and they listen. I mean, that's one thing we know for sure they listen, they listen to customer feedback.

Ron Beres

So, Morgan, with all of us spending more time indoors because of the coronavirus lockdown, the holidays, what trends are you seeing from cleaning and fragrance out there?

Morgan Brashaer

We are all indoors a lot more than probably this the same time last year, just because of all the regulations and everything right now. And I know at least where I am, we're getting to a point where the weather isn't even nice enough to be outside all that much, which is a major bummer because that's one of the few things that we were able to do is go out get some exercise get some fresh air. So, we are forced to do our houses beautiful. But you know, we're stuck inside more. We're stuck at home more. We have more people in homes together. We're seeing a lot of more multi-generational families moving in and living together right now just because they're trying to take care of each other or that's the best way to see them is to just be quarantined with them. So, we're seeing more people living together. Which leads to more odors. We're seeing a lot more cooking at home. 80% of people right now are doing 80% or more of all of their cooking. Yeah home, which was not the case a year ago or even eight months ago.

Lisa Beres

Remodeling, everyone's remodeling and remodeling. Yeah.

Morgan Brashaer

Pet adoption has spiked, it has skyrocketed during quarantine, because you have all these people who maybe always wanted a pet or wanted a companion or needed companion right now during this time, or the people who are usually traveling too much, or at an office every day. Now all of a sudden, they're at home, and they have time to train that new puppy, and everything like that. So, we've seen pet adoptions skyrocket, we've seen people creating home gyms because they can't go to fitness facilities anymore. And were seeing that.

Lisa Beres

Buying that equipment.

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah. And all of that is leading to more and more odors in the home, and more need to actually eliminate them at the source. So, they don't continue with that malodor cycle and continue circulating through the home. We mentioned earlier, some of the negative impacts. You know, some of them, such as social impacts maybe aren't as pertinent today, because we can't have those social interactions. But in a non COVID time, when you could have social interactions, you could entertain guests, you might not want to as much if you have odors in your home, so there would there could be some social negative impacts to it. Even as people you know, kids are doing remote learning and they're at home. Now, parents and adults are working from home full time, you want to be able to eliminate those mal loaders so that you can concentrate you can focus on what it is you're trying to do, what the what the task is what the work is you're trying to get done. So, we're seeing a major increase in in odors and in the need to eliminate them in the home.

Lisa Beres

I can see that. Yeah, that's a great point. And the gyms like you said, it's not like everybody has a dedicated space for their gym. So, their gyms are now in their dining room. Wherever they can fit them. Yeah, right. Yeah, we really want to applaud the sustainability efforts of P&G that listeners may not be aware of, including the fact that P&G is now purchasing 100% renewable electricity in the US, Canada and in Western Europe. And that 88% of P&G packages are considered recyclable. So, kudos to you guys. And I'd like to leave our listeners with some advice that they can take away from today's episode. If you have anything else you want to share.

Morgan Brashaer

One thing that I didn't get a chance to mention before but it's really, really important and has been a key component of Febreze. Since the beginning is the propellant because I know aerosols, in general, the entire category of aerosols is kind of frowned upon. They have been they have been known to use things like propane and butane, those hydrocarbon propellant in aerosols that are the same thing that's in your gas grills or cigarette lighter. Essentially, these hydrocarbons are exploding those molecules, those fragrance molecules out into your air, but for breeze does not use a hydrocarbon propellant in our stores.

Lisa Beres

So, to explain that, okay, so we eliminated CFCs, right? They were eliminated from aerosols, many years ago. But a lot of people you're a lot of people aren't aware of these other things that are still in aerosols, you're talking about the butane and the propane.

Morgan Brashaer

Yeah, but Febreze actually uses compressed nitrogen as our propellant. So, nitrogen is 100% natural, it makes up 87% of the air we breathe. And so, we, we have always believed that that is the safer way to formulate our product, it is a lot harder to formulate, it's a lot more expensive to create this way. But we have always from the beginning believed that it is the right thing to do. And so in our Febreze air bottle, you won't get that loud sound whenever you whenever you use it, because all it is all of the fret, the water based formula with all of the odor elimination, and the fragrance ingredients is in that bottom two thirds of the bottle. And the top part is compressed nitrogen. So, it is its compressed gas in there, and it pushes down really on the liquid and that's what pushes it out into the air. So, our water-based formula or 100%, natural nitrogen propellant has always been key components of our product. And so, I bring that up because there are things you can look for. When wanting to make decisions on air fresheners in your home. You mentioned look for the products that are unscented if you don't like fragrance, another one look for ones that are propelled by nitrogen so You're not incorporating the VOC propellants like hydrocarbons into your environment.

Lisa Beres

You have a spray. You have two versions. You have this nitrogen propellant. But then you also have a spray. Is that correct?

Morgan Brashaer

We do yeah. Our Febreze Air is what's considered in the aerosol category even though as I mentioned, it is not your traditional aerosol because that nitrogen propellant, but then we have the Fabric Refresher spray that is more of a trigger spray bottle, like a room spray, but for fabrics.

Lisa Beres

Because that doesn�t need to aerosolize. Right?

Morgan Brashaer

Right. It doesn't need to be airborne, in order to come into contact because the air product has smaller droplets, we do not measure particle size. And we know that all of our Febreze air products are designed to have particles between 85 and 120 microns. And so that's only basically going to get into your nasal cavity, and it will never reach your deep lungs. So, when you think about things like nebulizers asthma inhalers, where the intent of those particles is to get into your deep lungs, they have my they've got particle sizes of less than 10 microns. And so, the smaller the particle, the further it can get down into your respiratory tract. So, we always make sure that our particles are so large, that they will still be airborne, but can only make it into your nasal cavity cannot make it further into your respiratory tract. And then, and then the Fabric Refresher has much larger particle size, much larger droplets, because the intent of that product isn't like we mentioned, it isn't to be airborne and interact with the odors in the air, the intent is to really penetrate down into your soft surfaces, and draw out all of those deeply embedded odors that that have maybe been there for years, you know, we want to, we want to we have an additional technology in our Fabric Refresher. That's our odor magnet, it's a functional polymer that that really does attract those lingering odors. Especially that odor of like fast food, you know that that greasy food odor.

Lisa Beres

It just takes one French fry pack in the car, and the car smells for a week.

Morgan Brashaer

Exactly. So that that polymer in there is really good at attracting those lingering greasy food odors.

Lisa Beres

Wow. So, when you say you inhale, but it can't go past the nasal cavity, so it can't get into your bloodstream, then it cannot. Oh, wow. I mean, that kind of is a really profound statement when you think about because I think a lot of people with their hesitations of the synthetic fragrances Oh, you know, I'm going to be absorbing those in my body. But if it can't get past your nasal cavity, that's pretty amazing.

Morgan Brashaer

Yep. And that's something that we measure constantly to make sure that we are never, you know, same with our safety assessment process that I mentioned earlier, we will identify the safe range of an ingredient and then we will use 1000 times less than that just to make sure that there is a huge margin of error. In case a product is used incorrectly or anything like that, we want to ensure that there is a huge margin of error. Otherwise, we will never use that ingredient in any of our formulations. So similar to that, we measure things like particle size, because we know that this this particular product is meant to be airborne and you want to be able to breathe in the air after you spray you don't want to spray and have to leave the room completely. So, we want to make sure that it is incorporating odor elimination, incorporating the level of scent dependent on what the what the particular end user wants, from unscented to light to the base to the heavy Unstoppables fragrance. And then we also want to pay attention to the particle size and all of the ingredients within.

Lisa Beres

Gosh. Guys! Did you get a little crash course in chemistry and biology today? This is amazing. I hope you guys have learned so much from this show. You can learn more about Febreze�s ingredient transparency that we talked about at the top of the hour, and the SmartLabel at Febreze.com and there's no a in there. It's F E B R E Z E. I used to think it was A. Thank you so much for being with us today, Morgan, and for sharing your knowledge and passion. And be sure to visit us guys at RonandLisa.com forward slash podcasts to get all of the downloads and show notes from this episode. And don't forget to tune in next week to find out what the hack is going on in your home. Until then. Bye everyone,

Ron Beres

Bye everyone. Take care.

Narrator

This episode of the healthy home hacks podcast has ended. But be sure to subscribe for more healthy living strategies and tactics to help you create the healthy home you always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best content. See you on the next episode.