Fragrance allergens: What's Linalool?

Have you noticed the addition of what look like new ingredients to the ingredient list of some of your favourite cosmetics, like balms, soaps and salves? Mysterious words like linalool, limonene, pinene?

These are part of a shift happening in skincare and small-batch cosmetics nowadays here in Canada. For years, many products would simply list "fragrance" or "parfum" on a label without explaining what was actually inside. For those of us who are allergic or sensitive to certain fragrances (some make me sneeze like mad!), this was a problem because we couldn't find out exactly what it was that was triggering our allergies. But now, newer cosmetic regulations are moving toward much greater transparency, so we can find out what we're sensitive to and can avoid them by checking the ingredients on a product before purchasing it.

As of 2026, many fragrance allergens will need to be listed individually on cosmetic labels when present above certain thresholds. For leave-on products like salves and balms, that threshold is very low: 0.001%.

It's easy to think, The products I use are all-natural, so they shouldn't have any allergens! But in truth, these allergens are not just found in synthetic perfumes. They occur naturally in essential oils, tree resins, herbs, and botanicals -- including the conifer oils that we use in our forest-inspired skincare.

But that's not the entire story. These compounds are not just allergens or "fragrance ingredients" that we might instinctively worry about or avoid: they're naturally occuring parts of a plant's own chemistry that are beneficial for them. In nature, aromatic compounds help plants protect themselves from environmental stressors such as insects, fungi, UV exposure, oxidation, and physical damage. Many of these same compounds are what create that recognizable scent of pine forests, citrus peel, lavender fields, and tree resin. On human skin, they can be anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, hydrating, and soothing for skin.

So, while on one hand it's important for us to learn about what compounds our unique bodies may not like, it's also important to learn how the same compounds could be beneficial for our skin. It's not a good vs. bad, but rather knowing our own skin intimately.

Why these "allergens" exist in natural products

Essential oils are actually extremely complex: a single oil may contain dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of naturally-occurring aromatic compounds. These are the compounds that give lavender its softness, pine its fresh forest sharpness, or cedar its warm woody depth. They all occur naturally and are simply part of the plant. But despite them being completely part of nature, some people can develop sensitivities to them, especially in leave-on skincare products. That is why Health Canada is expanding its requirements for what has to be included in cosmetic ingredient labels.

What's important to note is that these compounds are not "added chemicals" hidden inside natural products. They are naturally occurring parts of the plants themselves. There is no pinene that I drop into our salves -- it simply naturally occurs in the pine resin and pine needles that we pick in the wild here at Surge Narrows. So when you smell the scent of the pine forest while going for a walk in the woods, you're already smelling compounds like pinene, limonene, and terpineol drifting naturally through the air. The essential oils simply hold those compounds and transfer them to our balms and salves.

They're not confined to essential oils, either: when we infuse pine or fir needles, cypress foliage, or even pine resin, the oil can extract the plant compounds and aromatic terpenes that contain allergens like pinene. However, infused oils are much weaker, less concentrated, and gentler chemically than the highly-concentrated essential oils.

In Surge Blooms products, the most common allergens that occur are pinene (mainly found in pine, fir, spruce, and other tree resins), limonene (found in citrus peels, pine, and others), linalool (found in lavender, clary sage, etc.), terpineol (found in pine, fir, cypress, etc.), beta-caryophyllene (found in copaiba, black pepper, clove, rosemary), cedrus atlantica oil/extract (from cedarwood) and lavender oil/extract (from lavender).

Pinene

Pinene is one of the most recognizable conifer compounds and is one of the defining scents of evergreen forests. This scent naturally occurs in pine, fir, spruce, juniper, cypress, and many tree resins. It's that crisp, fresh "forest" smell associated with conifers that we love so much!

Under the expanded Canadian allergen list, pinene is one of the fragrance allergens that may require disclosure above threshold concentrations. These show up in products containing pine essential oil, fir needle oil, spruce oil, juniper berry oil, and cypress oil.

Pinene is one of the most common aromatic compounds in nature. It has been studied for antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity, which might help reduce redness or oxidative stress on the skin. Sometimes, if the oils are oxidized from not being properly stored, or just being too old, they can become more sensitizing for some people. This is one reason why freshness, antioxidants like vitamin E, and storing your salves properly matter so much in botanical skincare.

Do botanical infusions contain these compounds too?

These fragrance compounds aren't linked only to essential oils -- they can naturally occur in simple herbal infusions, too. When pine needles, fir tips, spruce, cedar, or resin are infused into oil, the oil slowly extracts fat-soluble compounds from the plant material. Depending on the plant, infusion method, freshness of the botanicals, and temperature used, this can include naturally occurring terpenes such as pinene and limonene.

And this is especially true of conifer infusions.

Fresh or lightly wilted pine and fir tips are naturally rich in volatile aromatic compounds, which are the same compounds responsible for the smell of walking through an evergreen forest after rain or crushing fresh needles between your fingers. When infused in oils like olive or avocado, they transfer that scent into the oils for use in salves. While they're dramatically gentler and less concentrated than essential oils, they still carry traces of the plant's chemistry into the final products. For example, pine-infused oil may naturally contain pinene, fir-infused oil may contain pinene, limonene, and terpineol, and resin infusions may contribute warming aromatic compounds.

This means that even if a product that's scented very lightly (like ours) -- or even primarily through botanical infusions rather than heavy essential oils rather than heavy essential oil use -- may still naturally contain some of the fragrance allergens now in the updated Canadian cosmetic regulations.

However, the concentration of compounds is important to remember between essential oils and infusions.

Essential oils are highly concentrated extracts, while infused oils are broad, much milder botanical preparations. Just take in a sniff of a cypress essential oil and compare it to a sniff of a crushed wedcedar foliage in your hand. In most products, most fragrance allergens still come from the essential oils rather than infusions themselves.

Although it might seem a little overwhelming at first, the listing of these fragrance allergens highlights something really quite beautiful about plant-based skincare. And that's the fact that the chemistry of the forest exists naturally within the plants themselves. The scent of pine, fir, cedar, and crushed evergreen needles comes from real aromatic molecules that occur in nature without any human interference or lab experiments. There's no artificial perfume at all, but rather it's just the way nature intended it to be.

For small-batch botanical skincare makers like us, the expanded disclosure rules are creating a new level of transparency around those naturally occurring compounds. Rather than hiding behind vague terms like "fragrance" (really, what's even in it?), ingredient labels are beginning to show what's already inside the plants, flowers, woods, and resins around us.

Limonene

Limonene is another naturally occurring terpene found in many essential oils, and is commonly associated with citrus peels, pine, spruce, juniper, and cypress. It contributes brightness and freshness to a scent profile. Specifically in forest blends, it helps create that lifted, alive feeling often associated with fresh needles or crushed evergreen tips. For the skin, it has antioxidant properties, anti-inflammatory effects, and has skin brightening and astringent action, meaning that it might even out skin tone and tighten pores (read more about it here: Limonene: Uses, Benefits, Side Effects, and Dosage)

Because limonene is extremely common in both natural and synthetic fragrance materials, it is one of the best-known fragrance allergens on cosmetic labels today. Even if you don't know much about cosmetic chemistry, you're probably beginning to see limonene listed at the end of ingredient lists on soaps, lotions, shampoos, and perfumes as these new regulations come into effect.

Linalool

Linalool is another very common fragrance compound that's found in lavender, clary sage, rosewood, bergamot, and some conifers. It has a softer scent profile than limonene or pinene and contributes floral, airy, and calming notes to skincare and fragrance products. When combined with other scents in blends, linalool is part of what makes a scent feel rounded, smooth or relaxing, rather than sharp or medicinal.

Lavender essential oil is especially rich in linalool, which is why even products with only a few drops of lavender may still require linalool be added to the ingredient list.

Terpineol

Despite the scary-sounding name (it rather reminds me of turpentine), it appears naturally in many forest oils and contributes a soft woody freshness to the final product. It can be found in pine, fir, cypress, tea tree, and lavender, and helps create the feeling of misty forest air rather than harsh resin or sharp evergreen needles. It often contributes to what you might perceives as being a "clean" natural scent.

Under the expanded Canadian allergen list, terpineol is includeded among the fragrance allergens that may require disclosure above threshold levels.

Beta-Caryophyllene

Beta-caryophyllene is a warm, resinous aromatic compound that's found in copaiba, black pepper, clove, rosemary, and some conifers. It contributes depth, warmth, and a grounding effect to botanical scent blends. Unlike sharper terpenes, this compound often feels soft, woody, or skin-like. In forest salves, it can help a scent feel richer and more settled.

Cedrus Atlantica oil/extract

One especially interesting addition to the Canadian allergen list is the inclusion of various Atlas cedarwood ingredients under the umbrella term: Cedrus Atlantica oil/extract. This applies to Cedrus Atlantica Wood Oil, Cedrus Atlantica Bark Oil, and any cedrus atlantica extracts.

However, it's important to distinguish Atlas cedarwood from western redcedar (which we typically refer to as "cedar"). Western redcedar (Thuja plicata) contains different aromatic chemistry than Atlas cedarwood and is closer chemically than Atlas cedarwood and is chemically closer to the Thuja family than true cedarwood species. This was one of the most interesting discoveries for me, as I had always thought that the lovely green tree that I called "cedar" was actual cedar! But if you look up cedar online, you'll see that it looks quite different from real cedar.

Natural does not always mean allergen-free + why this matters

This is perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions I've seen in skincare: the idea that natural ingredients can't trigger sensitivities.

In reality, in the same way that we can become allergic to grass (hayfever, anyone) or to certain plants, those aromatic plant compounds can trigger sensitivities when passed to skincare products via essential oils or infusions. It's all natural -- but can still irritate sensitive skin in some people. It doesn't mean that botanical skincare is unsafe: on the contrary, compounds in many plants and trees are very beneficial to the skin.

For small-batch skincare makers like Surge Blooms who work with real botanicals, these changes help us and our customers have a more thoughtful relationship with ingredients. We consider how much essential oil we use, keep our ingredients fresh, formulate each salve carefully and source them intentionally. It encourages transparency with what we use, and you know exactly what is going on your skin.

For forest-inspired skincare especially, the ingredient list itself becomes a reflection of the landscape: pine, fir, cedar, resin, citrus-like terpenes, soft floral compounds, and aromatic woods -- all naturally occurring everyday around us. Instead of being alarmed, it's a first step into learning what compounds exist around us everyday -- the scents of the forest during a forest walk, the calming scent of lavender, and so much more that we have just might have been taking for granted. :)