Second Edition Preface
This revised edition took 12 years to complete, and is consider-
ably longer than the previous edition. There are three reasons
for the comprehensive revision. First, since the text was first
published in 1995, there have been many notable developments
in the area of essential oil safety. In addition to new data being
published, many guidelines and restrictions have been revised or
issued by various authorities, and we have introduced some of
our own.
Second, significant changes and improvements have been
made to the text, especially in the area of profiles, some of
these in response to reader feedback. The structure of both
the Essential Oil Profiles and the Constituent Profiles has been
considerably elaborated, and new material has been added. This
edition includes 400 Essential Oil Profiles, compared to 95
previously.
For each essential oil there is a full breakdown of constitu-
ents, and a clear categorization of hazards and risks, with
recommended maximum doses and concentrations. All the
compositional data for essential oils has been revised, expanded
and referenced. There are 206 Constituent Profiles, and this
section is 15 times that of the previous edition. Constituents
are cross-referenced: each Constituent Profile lists the amount
of that substance found in each of the 400 profiled essential oils.
Third, the structure of the book has been developed. There
are now separate chapters on the nervous, urinary, cardiovascu-
lar, gastrointestinal, and respiratory systems. Some sections of
text have moved from one chapter to another, and repetitive
or outdated material has been deleted. We now have detailed
safety advice on drug interactions, and overall there are more
cautions. The new material is reflected in over 3,400 new
references. A number of minor changes have also been made,
such as the styling of references and the categorization of
constituents.
The book’s premise is that understanding safety is not pri-
marily about knowing legal or institutional guidelines, but about
understanding the biological action of essential oils and their
constituents. There is a critique of current regulations, including
some of the IFRA guidelines, and the EU ‘allergens legislation’.
There is considerable discussion of carcinogens, the human rel-
evance of some of the animal data, the validity of treating an
essential oil as if it was a single chemical (for example, discussing
rose oil as if it contained nothing but methyleugenol) and the
arbitrary nature of uncertainty factors. For carcinogens, we have
given IFRA guidelines, EU guidelines and also our own guide-
lines for impacted essential oils.
Finally, when Tony Balacs and myself were in early stages of
the revision, Tony decided that he could no longer commit the
necessary time to the project and bowed out. An intensive
search for a replacement co-author lead me to Rodney Young,
who has honed considerably much of the pharmacology and
chemistry, and has contributed massively to this extensive
revision.
Robert Tisserand
Ojai, California
October 2012
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