Don’t Think Essential Oils Are Safe for Your Skin
Essential oils may be natural, but that doesn’t mean they are always beneficial or beneficial. These are extremely concentrated versions of chemicals that plants produce for a variety of reasons, some to attract pollinators, others to repel or harm their natural enemies.
The benefits of these oils for humans are that they smell good, which you probably already figured out: essential oils do not cure cancer, and there is no conclusive evidence that they do anything else for health .
But people who love (or sell) essential oils often say that there is oil for everything and that they can be used in many different ways. Meanwhile, the Atlanta Aromatherapy Institute is collecting examples of people affected by essential oils to convince aromatherapy professionals that these things are not safe.
When reading their injury reports, people said they got skin irritation, burns, and other troubles from using the oils in a variety of seemingly harmless ways. One woman developed blisters on her back after adding a few drops of sweet orange oil to her bath water. Another diluted the oils of frankincense, marjoram and lemongrass and applied the mixture behind the ears, where it seemed to cause scarring and burning.
Some oils, especially citrus fruits, can cause burns and blisters due to the skin’s increased sensitivity to the sun. Others can directly irritate the skin. The usual advice to dilute oils with water or a “carrier oil” such as coconut oil does not always help, as injury reports show. The saddest of all are the stories of people who applied oils to the skin or skin of their children as a treatment for a skin condition, but found that the oils only made the condition worse. (There is a disturbing photo here for those of you interested in this kind.)
In summary, some oils can be harmless to the skin when diluted appropriately, but don’t trust a friend or oil vendor to give you the correct parameters for this. (Some of the injuries reported in the report resulted from using the product exactly as directed.) It is best to sniff them from afar, although even that carries risks .