Analysis of analytical techniques for fragrances contained in perfumes and cosmetics

As perfumes, cosmetics, and other relevant products with fragrances become increasingly popular in the market, some health problems caused by some compounds in these fragrance products are also raised, such as allergic contact dermatitis. What's more, since it is legal for companies to label the ingredients merely as "Fragrance" for trade secret protection, there is an even higher risk towards customers' health, such as cancers and some chronic diseases. This article aims to survey some current analysis techniques, including chromatography, spectroscopy, and electronic nose, utilized in fragrance identification and suggestions of their application in different organizations. The characteristics, working mechanism, previous work about their application in fragrance analysis, etc. are introduced and compared in this work. Although gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) is the most popular and commonly used analytical technique used by most organizations, it does not have complete advantages compared to other developed methods. Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is more environmentally friendly and efficient, and Raman spectroscopy (RS) is more accurate and cost-effective. These two methods are more promising for flavor identification when enterprises and governments conduct quality supervision in the future. Electric nose, with a more sensitive sensor but less precision in identifying fragrance compounds, is more suitable for classification and product counterfeiting.