It is no secret that chemicals are starting to fill up our everyday lives. From the plastic wrapped around your bread, to the fillers in your haircare and the candle industry is no different - perhaps even worse.
Each day you spend hours breathing in the air within your own home, during colder seasons without much ventilation or thought. Living near a petrol station, a sewage centre or dump would make you quiver with nerves, ‘imagine what they are breathing in’ - with no thought to what you may be breathing in within your own home.
The candle industry has long been filled with plenty of what you might call ‘toxins’ (more on this word later). Fillers, additives that make scent stronger and carrying further and many hormone disrupting and carcinogenic ingredients. Over time this has only gotten worse, and despite many of the negative ingredients commonly used in the early 2000’s dying out - there are many more new versions being pumped into your favourite scents in order for businesses to save money and make larger profit margins.
Paraffin wax has been a big talking point over the years and whilst I agree its to be avoided (it both irritates my asthma and releases harmful VOC’S), it is actually the oils used within the candle itself that I find to be the most harmful.
Phthalates, parabens, added dyes, fillers and badly blended essential oils can be far more harmful than paraffin. They are mostly clear in colour, hidden easily and concealed by most large brands and even unknowing small businesses. Known endocrine disruptors - which in regular terms means altering your hormones and some parabens are even now being linked to fertility issues and breast cancers.
There is not much you can do about brands pushing these harmful ingredients. A lesson I learned early in Wildrace’s journey and one which frustrated me immensely. How can these brands be allowed to do it, and even worse, market their stuff like its grown in their back garden. How would we change the industry and better yet, be able to prove that we are changing the narrative. I myself have fertility issues (diagnosed as a young teenager, not as a candle maker) and so whilst I feel anger towards all the misleading claims I fell for before starting Wildrace, I can now use this to my advantage when showcasing my own candles to worrying customers. This brand is about honesty and I like to think that from one sufferer to another, we have each other’s back.
I come from a science background and science has not only interested me on a personal level, but it has held and moulded the very backbone of this business. Behind sustainability there is science, behind ingredients you find science and even the very formulas and creations I make in the studio - science! If you don’t know how something works, it’s sure that science will. I like how black and white the facts are, something is either harmful, or it is not. This I try to apply throughout the brand and it is something that I feel is right, needed and unfortunately very rare.
You hear about whistle-blowers being silenced for talking up about animal welfare or their alien experience and well … its been pretty scary feeling like a whistle-blower in the candle industry. At the root of it all is profit. Companies want to profit off your custom, and if they can slice a bit more for themselves at the cost of one or two infertile customers, asthma attacks and breast cancer - why not? Now I am not saying that burning a cheap candle is going to give you cancer, and burning a Wildrace candle leaves you worry free, nobody can predict future health and it is factored by so many other things. However, choosing a safe and free-from harmful ingredient candle sure wont make your chances any worse.
There are obviously people with allergies and these can be caused by something not considered harmful to the majority. One of my good friends is allergic to rosemary essential oil, which if you have seen the online trends - has become the ‘hair growing’ hack of the century. Lather it on at the root, and reap the benefit of long flowing locks. Rosemary essential oil is not considered harmful, unless of course you are allergic to it. It is however considered ‘toxic’. A word which I write a lot about.
Non-toxic and Toxin-free are two phrases being used like they are a free pass to being a millionaire. Label your product with one of these two labels are sales are sure to soar. But what if I told you this phrase is a lie? In the candle industry at least, there is no such thing as a non-toxic candle unless it is made with 100% plant-based wax and ZERO scent or oils. All oils, essential oil or fragrance are toxic from a science perspective - but this doesn’t mean they are harmful for inhaling. What it means in simple terms is that if you extract the oils from the wax and discarded them into a pond, your husbands cup of tea or made them into eye drops - there would be pain, uncomfortableness and pondlife would most certainly not be happy about it.
We should listen less to these buzz-words and more to the intention and ingredients within. Research those long words that sound scary. I received an email earlier this year where a confused customer questioned our own candles, ‘you said they were clean but I can see Acetyl cedrene, Benzyl salicylate and Linalyl acetate on the label on the bottom – very disappointed’. Obviously, we immediately reassured the customer that all of those crazy sounding words are derived from plants. It doesn’t help that the ingredients and laws on how we must display them sound so different to how we recognise them in every day life. Linalyl acetate for example – naturally occurring in Lavender and Bergamot but worded like its fresh out the lab. This is why ingredient honesty and research is so important.
So next time you see d-Limonene on an ingredient list and are about to instead buy from a ‘non-toxic’ brand simply not displaying the facts. Do a little bit of your own research, or buy from a brand that has done it for you. Because d-Limonene is pretty compulsory if you ever want to smell the bitter sweet scent of citrus. Derived from the peel and zest of citrus fruit but we agree it sounds like a dodgy electronica band.