Fate and Effects of Little Investigated Scents in the Aquatic Environment

The sense of smell is our most emotional sense. Although not always being aware of it, it plays an important role in our everyday live. Scents are widely used in Personal Care Products (PCPs) such as shampoo, washing lotions or make up. They give a pleasant smell, mask unpleasant scents and may even bind consumers to a specific brand. As a result, scents are being applied more and more and in turn are being introduced in increasing volumes into the environment. Their fate and effect in the environment are to date mostly unclear. Because many organisms rely on scents as means of communication, the emerging amount of scents emitted by our civilization can cause disturbances, known as "infochemical effect".In this chapter, we give a short overview on the current usage and regulation of scents for Europe and the United States of America and possible risks of the introduction into the environment. For the University Medical Center Freiburg, we calculated the amount of used scents for the year 2006 from manufacturers' information and give examples for used scents which also act as infochemicals