Fact Check No. 2- Are Candles Toxic?
Fact Check No. 2- Are Candles Toxic?
Now I promise all of these fact checks will not be about clean vs toxic products, this just happened to be something I wanted to look into.
When you google “are candles toxic?” or “are candles bad for you?” there aren’t very many reputable sources that come up. I couldn’t find any news sources, and most seem to be blog posts, or posts from a company/brand trying to sell you their own product in place of candles. Honestly, most of the people I see saying candles are toxic, then try to sell the Young Living essential oils.
And look, I have no problem with essential oils but Young Living is an MLM (pyramid scheme.) But the buzzwords seem to be carcinogens and paraffin wax. Much like in the first fact check, a lot of the articles and claims have no context to what they’re saying. And you can’t just label all chemicals as bad, everything has chemicals. One of my favorite Instagram follows is Jessica Malaty Rivera, she’s a microbiologist and infectious disease epidemiologist (aka she knows her shit!) She made a great point in one of her weekly AMAs and when talking about vaccine inserts and interpreting them made an excellent point, “the concept that anything that is a chemical is bad and that anything is opposite of that is ‘natural’ but there are a lot of natural chemicals inside the food we eat." I think that’s an important idea to keep in mind when deciding on what’s good and bad based on ingredients.
Healthline is one of my favorite websites, especially for looking into things like this because every article is medically reviewed and therefore really rooted in fact-checking and accurate information with links to studies and other resources.
In their article about whether candles are bad for you, they do a great job of breaking down common misconceptions and myths such as:
Candle wicks used to have lead in them, but since the 1970s lead-containing candles were removed from stores
They mentioned a 2009 study that “found that burning paraffin wax releases potentially dangerous chemicals, such as toluene” which they link but was never peer-reviewed and wasn’t considered reliable.
They also bring up a 2007 study that examined every major type of wax for 300 toxic chemicals, “The researchers found that the level of chemicals released by each type of candle was well below the amount that would cause human health problems. At this time, there’s no conclusive evidence that burning candle wax is damaging to your health.” Which I think connects to something I quoted in the last post, “it’s not the poison that’ll kill you, it’s the dose,” context is always key!
For the sake of not just quoting their entire article, this whole section was important:
While I highly recommend reading their entire article, I think one bit of information they mention in an intro to a section is a really good takeaway, “Burning almost anything has the potential to release chemicals that may harm your health.” And I think they’re obviously not saying that to scare us but it is something that should be taken into consideration. And they do a breakdown on specifically scented candles, soy candles, and the “healthiest” candles.
Their takeaway: “Burning a candle releases chemicals that can be potentially dangerous to human health. However, there isn’t any definitive research showing that exposure to candle smoke increases your risk of developing any health condition.
Inhaling any type of smoke can be unhealthy. If you plan on using candles regularly, it’s a good idea to burn them in a ventilated room to minimize the amount of smoke you breathe in.
Keeping your candles away from drafts can help decrease the amount of smoke they produce.”
And I think that’s my takeaway as well. As long as you’re not in a closet with a candle burning, or standing over it inhaling it as it burns, candles don’t burn off enough of anything to be “toxic.”
So I’m going to keep burning my favorite pumpkin bourbon candle from Target this fall!