The Green Beauty Guide

Do you know that some of the most popular fragrance ingredients are clinically proven strong irritants? Let’s take a look at Lyral, chemically known as Hydroxyisohexyl 3-cyclohexene carboxaldehyde, the most allergic fragrance chemical currently used.

Lyral is most commonly added to floral fragrances with fresh, romantic notes of muguet. If you sense “soft delicate, floral, lily, cyclamen, lilac note”, that’s Lyral working.

This fragrance ingredient causes contact dermatitis and eczema in 79 percent of participants of the recent study. During the study in Denmark, Lyral irritated the skin of even healthy people that were not usually prone to allergies.

Lyral is currently listed as an allergen, but since it smells so nice, it is used in many of the popular fragrances as well as every second deodorant on the drugstore shelf.

Today, Lyral contains in up to 30 percent cosmetic products on sale in the UK. It is often marked as “perfume”.

Lyral is currently listed as an allergen but is contained in many of the popular fragrances as White Musk (The Body Shop), Red Door and Green Tea (Elizabeth Arden), Opium (Yves Saint Laurent), Black (Kenneth Cole) and practically in every second deodorant on the market.

Sources: Hydroxyisohexyl 3-cyclohexene carboxaldehyde (Lyral) is still a frequent allergen. Braendstrup P, Johansen JD; Danish Contact Dermatitis Group. Contact Dermatitis. 2008 Sep;59(3):187-8.

Fragrance ingredient labelling in products on sale in the U.K. Buckley DA. British Journal of Dermatology. 2007 Aug; 157(2):295-300.

Hydroxyisohexyl 3-cyclohexene carboxaldehyde- known as Lyral: quantitative aspects and risk assessment of an important fragrance allergen. Johansen JD, Frosch PJ, Svedman C, Andersen KE, Bruze M, Pirker C, Menné T. Contact Dermatitis. 2003 Jun;48(6):310-6.