Toxicity of Essential Oils

• Acute toxicity of essential oils by the oral route is low or very low
• Many of the oils used have an LD50 between 2 and 5g/kg body weight (e.g. anise, eucalyptus, and clove), and for most of them greater than 5g/kg body weight (e.g. chamomile, citronella, lavender, marjoram, and vetiver).
• Other oils have further low LD50 between 1 and 2 g/kg for sweet basil, taragon, hyssop (1.5 g/kg), savoury (1.37 g/kg), sassafras (1.9 g/kg), winter green (0.9–3.25 g/kg), chenopodium (0.25 g/kg), thuja (0.83 g/kg), pennyroyl (0.4 g/kg) and mustard oil (0.34 g/kg).
• A review of the available literature shows that serious accident involves young children, due to the ingestion of oils such as clove (eugenol) eucalyptus, pennyroyl (pulegone), winter green (methyl salicylate deadly) and parsley (apiole) in large quantity.
• The chronic toxicity of essential oils is also not well known at least for uses, such as aromatherapy as well as for any other route of administration as the doses in which they are used are too low for chronic toxicity.