Essential Oil Safety.
A guide for health care professionals.

By Robert Tisserand & Tony Balacs.
isbn 0443052603

A revised version of the above is supposed to be in print soon. Some of the points below may be a useful guide as to what to look out for in the new book.

Robert Tisserand was the first person in aromatherapy to introduce verifiable facts on the safety of essential oils. His first manual was mainly covering toxicity based on RIFM data. This was a fine first attempt at a complex set of issues applicable to aromatherapy.

Subsequently, in 1995, the book mentioned above was produced in collaboration with Tony Balacs. If only Robert had stuck to the known facts on essential oils and left the unsound chemistry out, perhaps the book would have been far superior. As it stands, this book contains valuable information on safety - if one understands the subject already. I know from the numerous aromatherapy course notes I have been asked to evaluate, that the average aromatherapy teacher does not have the necessary knowledge to be able to teach safety adequately using this book as their guide.

The book contains numerous statements of opinion with no evidence provided to back up that opinion. Unfortunately, these 'opinions' are presented in such a way that they tend to look like statements of fact.

Skin absorption. Several methods of increasing absorption are mentioned such as cleaning the skin, but nowhere is it mentioned that increasing dermal absorption of essential oils can cause adverse skin reactions. Aromatherapists and others may well use the methods described, thinking they are doing good, and cause skin reactions as a side effect.

The fact that certain essential oils enhance the penetration of other substances through the skin, is no evidence that the essential oil is also passing through.

All the way through this book, animal data is used to support their opinions, particularly in regard to the actions of individual chemicals, and yet in other places they query the validity of such data - see page 40.

Much of the introduction on how fragrance chemicals are metabolised is based on experiments conducted on animals using SYNTHETIC fragrance chemicals. The fact that such chemicals are rarely identical to their natural equivalents is never mentioned. Therefore, any results extrapolated from the use of unnatural products on animals to humans is unreliable in the extreme.

Mr. Balacs suggests that the safe chronic dosage should be around 100 times less than the oral LD50, then why are they still saying pennyroyal is hazardous?

Likewise the MTD for sage he has calculated at 0.4g. equal to around 8 drops of oil ORALLY, yet far lower systemic intake is achieved in massage.

SAGE: The W.H.O. committee on toxicology severely criticised those scientists who do not differentiate between the toxicity levels of the different thujone isomers. This vital differentiation is not mentioned in this book. I recall years ago asking this question of Balacs at a conference and he did not know the answer, yet that information was available to those who knew about the chemistry of plants.

Much of the metabolic information on specific organs bears no resemblance to aromatherapy, and seems to be in the book as padding. Most of the animal work has been from administration of absolutely stupid levels of substances.

Suggesting that untested essential oils may be safe based purely on their chemical composition is very hazardous. We know that some of the chemicals which can cause adverse reactions occur at levels which may hardly be noticeable on normal commercial analysis.

After delving into all the misleading chemistry which pads out the book, we are then told under 'Drug interactions' "The plasma binding mechanism is in our view likely to be unimportant, as essential oils scarcely reach the circulation in sufficient quantities after aromatherapy massage or inhalation." Therefore, if that is the case, what the heck are they doing filling this book with page after page of highly misleading organic chemistry?

SUMMARY:
I do not blame Robert Tisserand for the misleading information to be found in this book. He is not an expert in essential oil analysis or chemistry. I hold Tony Balacs responsible as co-author. He was trained in chemistry and only seemed to understand individual chemicals, rather than the enormously complex chemical blends found in plant extracts. That subject is a specialist branch of chemistry called phytochemistry which it seems he did not train in.

These kind of fundamentally unsound chemical-based theories are what has become the accepted norm among career toxicologists. It is leading to the destruction of the ability of traditional healers and those who want to utilise plant extracts in products, to be able to obtain and/or use them. This book does not help us by sorting safety facts from chemical theories.