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The Research Institute for Fragrance Materials, Inc. (RIFM) is excited to share that its Safety Assessment Program has reached an important milestone.

Thanks to the generous continued support of its members and the determined efforts of its Science, Database, and Editorial teams, RIFM has published safety assessments covering 1,500 original discrete fragrance materials in the peer-reviewed literature.

(All RIFM’s peer-reviewed and published Safety Assessments and Research are available open-access at the Fragrance Material Safety Assessment Resource Center, a collaboration between RIFM and science publishers Elsevier.)

In addition to these 1,500 published materials, RIFM has submitted Safety Assessments covering approximately 200 materials for peer review, totaling 1,700 now or soon to be available.

“The complete palette of in-use discrete fragrance materials runs about 2,200 materials in any given year,” explained RIFM’s Safety Assessment Manager, Danielle Botelho, PhD. “That leaves another 500 materials, which RIFM has already evaluated. We expect to complete the process of Expert Panel submission and review for those remaining 500. If the Expert Panel approves the safety assessments, we will meet our goal of submitting all discrete materials for peer-reviewed publication by the end of 2024.”

(The Expert Panel for Fragrance Safety is an independent, international team of researchers and academics without ties to the fragrance industry. The Expert Panel reviews and must approve all of RIFM’s work before RIFM submits it for peer-reviewed publication in a reputable scientific journal.)

“In addition to the 2,200 discrete materials,” Dr. Botelho continued, “the fragrance material palette includes approximately 900 Natural Complex Substance (NCS) materials. (NCS ingredients are extracted from plants.) RIFM anticipates completing first-round safety assessments for these materials by the end of 2027.”