Many of us are enamored with the fragrance of essential oils: they smell heavenly and are incredibly concentrated. But using them comes with a certain responsibility.

What is an Essential Oil?

An essential oil (also called a volatile oil) is made of certain chemicals in the plant, terpenes, that provide the smell. When we inhale a stem of rosemary, we are smelling the essential oils. These oils are so light they evaporate easily, rising with the water in a distillation machine to create a pure product that can be captured and bottled. When collected with the water, it is called a hydrosol or flower water. When the oils are skimmed off the top and collected separately, it is called the essential oil. 

This separated, collected oil is very potent. If you’ve ever used or watched a demonstration of a distillation machine (a “still”), you’ll know that it can take handfuls, pounds, or even tons of plant material to yield only a very little essential oil. When using a home distiller, you can harvest basketfuls of plants and yield only a few drops of essential oil; when commercial distillers do this, they harvest literal tons of plants to yield only a few quarts of essential oil, which are bottled in tiny bottles and sold by the dram or the half-ounce. (A hydrosol, made in a still or distillation machine as shown here, is a blend of the drops of essential oil with the rest of the water.)

At-Risk Plants

This material is precious—we do not want to overharvest our plants in the process of creating essential oils. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is happening to some of the most fragrant and precious plants on our Earth, such as sandalwood and frankincense resin (shown below). The demand for these incredible fragrances is so high that we are at risk of harvesting these plants to extinction. For this reason alone, it is worthwhile to exercise restraint and to educate ourselves about the essential oil manufacturing process.

Essential Oil Safety

It’s also important to recognize that essential oils are potent in and on our bodies and must be used with caution and, again, restraint. Essential oils are incredibly antibacterial and antifungal, making them useful in salves and remedies that fight infection. Some people even consume them internally, but I’ve never recommended this as I believe essential oils are toxic internally and damage the liver, which is tasked with removing wastes from the blood. Instead, use essential oils topically and include them in spritzers, salves/ointment, and soaps, but they should never be included in tinctures, teas, oxymels or any other remedy that you ingest.

For these reasons, I don't recommend that you include bottles of essential oils in gifts to others. While it may be compelling to toss in a tiny, lovely-smelling essential oil, such as lavender, for your giftee, I think working with herbs comes with a responsibility toward safety and education, and handing someone a bottle of essential oil who has not been educated about its use, history, and function is leading to trouble.

Instead, gift your student, mother or friend with remedies you’ve crafted (using essential oils or not) and save the essential oils for use in projects where you can be discerning and careful. I provide many fun gift and DIY ideas in my book Llewellyn's Little Book of Herbs--these are easy-to-make, safe, and use just the right amount of concentrated extracts so that you feel comfortable both making them and gifting them.

Excerpted/adapted from Llewellyn’s Little Book of Herbs by Holly Bellebuono