Searching for scents

A year ago I was asked to do an Extended Project Qualification by my chemistry teacher, Miss Cahillane. After a lot of deliberation over what to write about, I read a ChemistryWorld magazine looking for inspiration. I was attracted to the magazine in the first place due to the pretty pink front cover with the title "Perfumes The quest for fresh scents" I scanned through all the articles until I got to the perfume one in the middle.

As I read Emma Davies's "The sweet scent of success" I knew that I really wanted to write my 5000 word essay on that.

After months of research and planning, I began to write my essay starting with how we got to where we are now in the perfume world.
Perfumes are ancient, they have been used since Ancient Egyptian times for embalming the dead, for bathing in Ancient Rome, as gifts to the newborn Jesus in the Bible.

One of the biggest chemical advances in perfumery was made by Avicenna, aka Ibn Sina.
He discovered that by heating roses with steam and distilling the vapour that was produced. He called it rosewater. In fact, they still use this method in industries to make essential oils, even if it is a bit more advanced than Avicenna's version.
Nowadays oils are less common than synthetic chemicals in perfumes for many reasons:

• It is really expensive to grow all the plants to distill the oils, and quite ineffective, for example
• 7,926 mint leaves just for one bottle! I mean, this is mass produced as well, how much mint must they grow?


• Synthetic perfume molecules can be controlled, so the odour is much more consistent, making the products more consistent (if not better) in quality.


• Perfumes are also becoming much more experimental, so there is a huge market for brand new smells, rather than replications of natural smells.
  

A bit more chemistry to think about when making the molecules:

• When you're wearing a perfume, the last thing you want is for it to wear off within minutes, so the molecule has to release the vapour slowly, which can be done by reactions under very subtle conditions, for example a slow reaction occurring in sunlight


• How biodegradeable they are. With climate change and environmental-friendliness as the big thing of the moment, the molecules have to break down once they've been released, or else it could cause environmental damage, then again they can't break down too quickly or your perfume will last only seconds. It's a fine balance.
  
• Some perfume molecules can react with enzymes on the skin to make malodorants, which are the worst thing you'd want your perfume to do. Malodorants are toxic, cause nausea and block your olfactory nerves (the ones you smell with). So basically your perfume would be harmful AND stop you from being able to smell anything.
  
• Some molecules are allergens, and new EU law means that perfumers can't use anything that could potentially be an allergen, I mean that's a little strict. That's like saying we mustn't use wheat in ANY food because someone out there may be allergic (like my sister).

Basically that was my introduction, ok so it had a little more sciency stuff but you get the gist, hopefully.