What we are told is a musk fragrance is highly unlikely to come from real musk. The real deal is from a small deer growing in the mountains between India and China. It has almost been hunted to extinction and is banned in international trade except for France and China. Production was last reported as about 700 lb (320 kg) per year

What we as Western, non-French consumers do get is synthetic chemicals that smell like musk to various degrees. There are three types of synthetic musks – nitromusks, polycyclic musks, and macrocyclic musks, in rough order of increasing cost and complexity. The first synthetic, a nitromusk was invented in 1911. Common names of products include white musk, Eygptian musk, Arabian musk, etc. They’re all just chemicals.

The first two types have been discovered to be non-biodegradable and have been found in fish, mother’s milk, and human fat. Some earlier compounds have been withdrawn from commercial use due to neurotoxicity or photosensitivity. Now, just because discernable quantities of synthetic musk fragrance show up in rivers downstream of sewage outfalls and in “natural” baby food is not a reason to get too excited but it is a reason for caution.

So given the two questions about 1) social and environmental responsibility and 2) consumer quality, I’d really like to know what I getting when I spend my money on a fragrance. All in all, my first choice would be natural musk followed by macrocyclics - the latter being the closest approximation to the natural and are readily biodegradable.

What I really need is the information to make an informed purchasing decision. I doubt that SPMO uses high grade synthetics but… I don’t know. The problem comes down to the power of information. – the manufacturer has it but we don’t.