Myth Debunking: Scented Candles Accused of Causing Cancer? The Truth Revealed

If you're any phobic about the big C disease at all, you'd bettter skip this article or you'll get ideas. Or rather you should read it to decipher another bunch of C, the kind that has you nodding your head incredulously and exclaiming "my, my!"

After all the IFRA brouhaha that erupted last spring concerning the strictening of perfumery raw materials control and percentage allowed in commercial products {you can read about it clicking the highlighted links}, there comes intimidating news concerning even the humble ~or not so humble, depending on your decadence quota and disposable income~ scented candle! According to a fun two-sided approach on the Telegraph.co.uk, in which scented candles are praised and trashed respectively by Becky Pugh and Nick Collins based mainly on aesthetic and cultural reasons, it also transpires that "Researchers at South Carolina State University have discovered that the humble scented candle releases potentially harmful amounts of toxins". How scary, right?

To be thorough we investigated this info a little (our geeky nature cannot be hidden for long). Here are some of the claims of the research:

"This study characterized the products of emission by individually burning 91 candles inside a stainless steel combustion chamber and determining specific emission rates of soot, benzene and lead. Candle soot was typically less than 1 µm, contained up to 66% elemental carbon and carried numerous adsorbed organic compounds including dibutyl phthalate, diethyl phthalate, toluene and styrene. Volatile organic compound emissions included benzene, styrene, toluene, ethyl benzene, naphthalene, acetylaldehyde, benzaldehyde, benzene, ethanol, and 2-butanone (methyl ethyl ketone). Analysis for lead revealed some candles emitted significant quantities of aerosolized lead during combustion".

The quote originates from "Characterisation of Scented candle emissions and associated public health risks" by J. David Krause, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, College of Public Health, University of South Florida, August 1999.

Please note the date folks: 1999!!! I mean, geez, a whole decade ago! Wouldn't there be more info available till now and wouldn't companies have cottoned up to those claims so as to reduce the hearmful ingredients as much as possible? After all nail polish comes sans toluene or phtalates anymore, therefore why would candles be far behind? And just how many of you burn candles inside a stainless steel combustion chamber, unless you're fetishizing KZ-Dachau (in which case what are you doing reading this venue?). Somehow this piece of "news" is making the rounds on the Internet (see this article on The Daily Mail for some quotes by doctors or this one spinning off the info) and one is picking it after the other which usually has my antennae up on something fishy being behind all that. It's either that "there are no news in August" or...something else. There is the snippet mentioned that "The neighborhood around NPR HQ in Washington is crawling with chemists attending a big meeting of the American Chemical Society this week". Could it be comparable to the war declared on fragrances and the egoes involved in the academic world?

It's quite logical and sane that Nick Collins exclaims on the Telegraph:

"One really has to respect the brass neck of the designers who make these things, because they have got the women of this world eating out of the palm of their hand [...]If candles weren’t primarily an evening product, one might call it daylight robbery – the market in candles is believed to be worth a jaw-dropping £125 million, 90 per cent of which are bought by women. What’s more, the market has increased threefold in the past three years".

Who can argue with that? It's a way to make the economy roll! Still I would like to focus more on this attitude as presented by Becky Pugh:

"Being, without doubt, a luxury item, it's hard to justify the cost, especially as the inconvenient truth is that the cheaper the candle, the sicklier its fragrance. So although every homeware store, and even supermarket, now stocks a range of them, you need a fairly posh one for it to be worthwhile".

Indeed one would presume that the real danger healthwise, the lead-treated wicks, are often eliminated from more expensive candles, while paraffin (a cheap by-product of petroleum) is less opted for in favour of soy wax. "Candles made from soybean-derived wax didn't show the same pattern of potentially toxic emissions" [quote source] although scientists are wary of cautioning this is merely qualitative info. Did the soybeans manufacturers lobby up for their product or was the Candlemaking Foundation caught asleep at the wheel? From the following ~published on the above source~ it transpires that something is rotten in the kingdom of Denmark: Scott Hensley notes:

"One more caveat: the work is funded by the Department of Agriculture, which wouldn't mind if soybean-based candles became the rage. As a summary of the research under the headline "Soybean Candles For Healthy Life And Well Being" puts it: 'By replacing paraffin wax with soy wax in candles, an estimated 60 million pounds of soybeans would be required for annual candle production. This requirement will have a direct economic impact on soybean farmers as well as a health and environmental impact in this country'."

Draw your own conclusions!

Of course one could also claim that soy is one of the most heavily genetically-modified products on the planet (and it's in the top 3 actually) so that would open a whole new can of worms, but you know what I am getting at, don't you! And to further this, there is also the fact of a scientist for one company going public on MSNBC that an industry study a few years ago could essentially not differenciate between paraffin-based and vegetable-based candles' emissions!!

Personally I would be wary of linking cancer to any of these products: cancer is increasingly identified as being a genetical predisposition (and believe me I know, I have family members working in cancer research at top notch institutions), meaning you will get it anyway if you're so DNA-inclined and panic certainly doesn't help, nor would banning scented candles bring any significant results; I'd venture that industrial and urban air pollution is hundreds of times more detrimental in exarcebating cancer growth. Like an intelligent commenter noted: "I think the only way to avoid cancer-causing materials these days is to move into a bubble. Unless the plastic turns out to be a cancer-causer too…which it will". Another writer at The Guardian "gets" it, although to her scented candles are a no-no due to other reasons; but that's totally cool and she might have a point (the article is worth a read).
The claim that scented candles "could trigger asthma attacks or skin complaints (ie/eczema)", according to the American Chemical Society's annual conference, that I can believe. But surely the solution to that would be quite simple: avoid whenever possible. Like with smoking, a certain regard for other people's comfort goes a long way...

David's The Death of Marat has been cleverly manipulated to include Cire Trudon candles in papermag.com. I found it supremely fitting! Aqua di Parma candles via splendora.com