I've spent the last week reading safety data sheets. Sounds riveting, I know. Try not to be too jealous of my glamorous life.
It started with a reel I posted about a Kmart product, the anko Refresh Citrus and Mint Essential Oil Blend, and it piqued my interest because it's being marketed and sold as an essential oil blend. Yet what I found in that safety data sheet is far from the wellness pitch of essential oils.
And we need to talk about it, because this is bigger than one product. So what's actually in this bottle? What's the problem?
Let's start with the basics. When you pick up something labelled with the words 'essential oil' at Kmart, you probably assume you're getting some kind of natural, plant-derived product. That's a reasonable assumption. That's what the name implies.
Here's what the Safety Data Sheet (SDS), a legally required document for hazardous chemicals, actually tells us...
The primary ingredient, making up to 50 percent of the product, is something called methyl dihydrojasmonate. It's a fully synthetic fragrance compound made in a lab (often from petrochemicals) to mimic the smell of jasmine. It is not a plant extract. It has never seen a jasmine flower.
The actual plant-derived essential oils in this product like orange oil, spearmint oil, bergamot, cardamom, fennel, and lemon, make up somewhere around 2 percent of the bottle.
The rest of the ingredients are largely synthetic fragrance chemicals, many of them with petrochemical origins, and compounds derived from the same raw material base as plastic.
So when I say this is not an essential oil blend in any meaningful sense, I'm not being dramatic. I'm reading directly from the 40-page document the manufacturer is legally required to produce.
Here's what the Safety Data Sheet says and where it gets really uncomfortable.
The SDS classifies this product as a hazardous chemical and a Schedule 5 poison under Australian law. It carries the signal word 'Danger'. Not caution, not warning. Danger.
The hazard classifications include:
- Skin Corrosion/Irritation Category 2: causes skin irritation.
- Sensitisation (Skin) Category 1: may cause an allergic skin reaction that becomes permanent.
- Serious Eye Damage Category 1: causes serious eye damage.
- Germ Cell Mutagenicity Category 2: suspected of causing genetic defects.
- Reproductive Toxicity Category 2: suspected of damaging the unborn child.
- Carcinogenicity Category 2: suspected of causing cancer.
- Specific Target Organ Toxicity: may cause drowsiness or dizziness through inhalation.
The SDS also recommends that anyone handling this product wear chemical goggles, a full face shield, nitrile gloves, and protective clothing.
The average person using this product is putting it in a bedroom diffuser with bare hands, and none of those safety devices.
There's also a warning in the SDS that the product can form explosive peroxides over time when exposed to air and light, and that opened containers should not be stored for more than 12 months. And yet, there is no such warning on the retail label or the bottle.
I want to be precise about something very important.
The 'suspected' classifications like 'suspected carcinogen' and 'suspected of damaging the unborn child', are precautionary, based on animal studies and limited human data. They do not mean this product is proven to cause cancer or birth defects in humans at typical exposure levels. And we don't have this data because it would be unethical to test this kind of thing in a lab setting on humans, but we can play around with it while we all use an 'essential oil blend' at home and wait for the results in ten years.
But this isn't, 'this product is killing you.' Although I am almost certain from my findings and research into the 29 ingredients, that it's not good for you. This is about the fact that consumers have no way of knowing any of this from the label, and that the gap between what's on the front of the bottle and what's in a legally required safety document is enormous.
That is a transparency problem. And it's a systemic one. So is Kmart doing something illegal? The unfortunate thing is, probably not. And that's what we need to change.
Fragrance and essential oil blends fall into a regulatory gap in Australia. They're not therapeutic goods, so they don't require TGA registration or strict ingredient disclosure. They're not food, so food labelling laws don't apply. The hazardous substance rules that mandate the SDS apply primarily to workplace handling, not to consumer-facing labels.
The ACCC oversees consumer product safety but does not require that SDS hazard classifications be disclosed on retail labels.
So a product can be classified as a hazardous chemical, carry a poisons schedule classification, contain a substance on Australia's prescription medicine schedule (benzyl benzoate is Schedule 4, the same schedule as prescription medications), and sit on a Kmart shelf with no prominent warning of any of that... And it's legal. That's the problem.
Europe does things very differently.
The European Union requires 26 specific fragrance allergens to be individually named on cosmetic product labels when present above certain concentrations. Australian law has no equivalent requirement.
At least six ingredients in this product would require individual disclosure on a European label:
- Benzyl benzoate
- Citral
- Linalool
- Geraniol
- Beta-citronellol
- Linalyl acetate
Australian consumers are receiving less information than European consumers about the exact same chemicals in the exact same types of products.
There's also a diffuser problem nobody is talking about.
The SDS hazard classifications for this product are based on the liquid in the bottle. But this product is designed, marketed, and sold to be used in a diffuser and aerosolised into the air of an enclosed room, often overnight, sometimes in children's bedrooms.
That converts a liquid hazard into a direct inhalation hazard. And the SDS is explicit that inhalation of the vapours may cause dizziness, rapid shallow breathing, increased heart rate, respiratory irritation, and in significant exposure, loss of consciousness.
There is no warning on this product about its use in an enclosed space. There is no warning about use around children. There is no warning about use around pets.
So... There's a lot of issues here. It's a bit bigger than misleading marketing. And it's bigger than just Kmart, but Kmart is the example. It is not necessarily the only one, or even the worst one. The fragrance industry broadly operates under labelling standards that prioritise trade secrecy over consumer transparency, and Australia's regulatory framework has not kept pace.
Consumers are routinely buying products they believe to be one thing, when they are actually another, and our labelling laws don't require companies to tell them the difference.
That's true for this product. It may be true for many others sitting on shelves right now.
So what do we do?
- If you're a consumer: start asking questions. Ask brands what's in their products if they're using fragrances. Ask for their safety data sheets. If they can't or won't tell you, that tells you something. Because brands only hide information when they're scared to share it.
- If you're a brand: this is your moment. Transparency about what's in your products (genuinely, not just greenwashing like this) is increasingly what consumers are demanding and what regulators in other markets are requiring. Get ahead of it.
- If you're in the industry or in policy: Australia's consumer product labelling framework needs to catch up with Europe. The gap is real, it's documented, and this will not be the last time someone reads a safety data sheet and asks why the label looks nothing like it.
On Monday I'm being interviewed by the news for a TV feature on this. I'll be keeping you updated as this unfolds.
In the meantime, the SDS for this product is publicly available, you have to email Kmart to ask for it, and I had to follow up a few times and wait a month to receive it, but they sent it. And everything I've written here is drawn directly from it. I'd encourage anyone who wants to see it to look it up. The document number is Chemwatch 7914-64.
Read it yourself. Then ask why the label doesn't tell you any of it.
Claire.
