The fragrance industry's safety program is founded on assessing fragrance materials and either establishing 'Safe Use Levels', or prohibiting their use, based on studying their potential effects on people and the environment.
Currently the safety program contains 186 'Standards', which restrict, or prohibit, the use of selected fragrance materials.
Updates
As per IFRA’s announcement, there are six new Standards based on the Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) methodology, four revised Standards, a new Standard restricting the use of Furfural, a new Group Standard prohibiting the use of 2,4-Dienals and 11 revised Standards which take into account the contributions of Schiff Bases.
One of the six new Standards is the result of new data becoming available supporting the safe use of Dihyrocoumarin. The result is that this previously prohibited material will now become a restricted material.
Finally, one Standard has a corrected maximum use level.
The QRA approach is a more refined approach for evaluating sensitizing materials, and provides more precise guidance on use levels of materials depending on the situation and the product in which they are used.
The IFRA Standards are now made up of 102 Standards restricting the use of ingredients, 80 prohibiting the use of ingredients, and 20 setting a purity requirement.
Code of Practice
Compliance with the Standards of the IFRA Code of Practice is mandatory for all companies belonging to IFRA directly or IFRA member associations.
The Code of Practice applies to the manufacture and handling of all fragrance materials, for all types of applications and contains the full set of IFRA Standards.
The IFRA Code of Practice is distributed worldwide and is in the hands of all member associations and their member companies, in addition to governmental regulatory bodies and interested stakeholders.