Fragrance
In plain terms
A single word that stands for the scent in a product. One "fragrance" listing can represent anywhere from a few to a few hundred separate ingredients, which companies are allowed to keep undisclosed as a trade secret.
What the evidence shows
The single word "fragrance" can legally stand for a scent blend the maker never has to disclose, and two separate concerns live inside it. The first is reaction: the American Academy of Dermatology calls fragrance the leading cause of allergic contact dermatitis from cosmetics, and in a US survey about a third of adults reported a problem from fragranced products, most often headaches. The second is hormonal. The blend often contains phthalates, added to hold scent, and in a study in Environmental Health Perspectives, prenatal exposure to several phthalates, including the metabolite of the one most used in fragrance, tracked with shorter anogenital distance in baby boys, a marker of reduced male genital development, at exposure levels common in the population. The Endocrine Society classifies phthalates as endocrine disruptors and holds that the "safe dose" thresholds regulators use do not hold for this class, which acts at low everyday doses. Agencies like the FDA have not called fragrance phthalates a demonstrated risk, but they judge them with a threshold model the endocrine field says is the wrong tool. None of the blend is visible on the label, and a claim does not always settle it: "unscented" often means a masking fragrance was added to cancel the base smell of the other ingredients, so an unscented product can still carry the same undisclosed blend, while "fragrance-free" is the stronger claim, though it is loosely enforced.
On the label
It appears as "Fragrance" or "Parfum," usually toward the end of the ingredient list, though the blend it represents may include many separate components.