As a soap maker, I work with essential oils a lot. Part of my job is to handle hazardous chemicals in a safe manner, and use them (SAFELY) to make amazing products with correct dilution rates.
Fragrances, Essential Oils, and Caustic Soda are all part of my job, and all are hazardous to human health in their raw states. This goes with the territory of bath and body products, so we have a lot of personal protective equipment, and we try not to injure ourselves.
Last week I was bringing freshly washed utensils back to the studio (we don’t have running water out there yet, so I wash up inside the house and spend a lot of time carrying buckets of things backwards and forwards.) Anyway, I noticed one of my spatulas was damp around its join, so I dried it with a paper towel, before pulling the spatula head off to dry it properly.
Big mistake.
It wasn’t filled with cold soapy water, it was filled with lye water, which I flicked up the back of my hand and all over my work space. You see, Betty Crocker spatulas, which are usually amazing for soap making, have removable heads, which is frankly a shitty design, and this one had previously been used to stir lye, not soap.
I was not expecting lye water to flick everywhere, obviously. I was not expecting my spatula to be full of caustic liquid still – not when it had been washed twice, and I was sure I’d taken the head off it and rinsed it. Obviously not.
I washed my hands and arms well with lots of cold water, cleaned up my work space, and was all good. No burns, because I knew what I was doing to clean up the mistake. I will not be using those spatulas to stir lye again.
Essential oils are frequently touted as “totally safe, made by nature, omg amazeballs!” But they can be just as dangerous as unexpected caustic soda flicking everywhere, although MLM resellers will frequently not mention that bit. I use gloves when I work with essential oils and fragrances, which is both best manufacturing practise, and a sign of respect for my lovely unburned skin.
I made bath salts today – all essential oils. My joints are playing up, so I elected to mix the salts in my stand mixer, rather than mixing by hand. Why have good tools if you don’t use them?
Bath salts are amazing. We don’t use more than 1% fragrance load in a batch of salts, which makes them safe and gorgeous smelling. When diluted in a bath they smell wonderful, and carry close to zero risk of injury because they dilute into the water. I say close to zero risk, because life is not a zero risk game and someone is always going to be allergic to something.
I have made a lot of bath salts, and know that I frequently end up with a fragrance headache at the end of making, so I had two doors open – one at either end of the shed. I was wearing gloves. I was well ventilated, I was geared up. I was careful.
What I did not count on was how the stand mixer would be much more effective at dispersing the initial load of essential oil within the salts mix, which in turn, managed to send microscopic bits of essential oil coated salt into the air around me, which I breathed in. Do. Not. Recommend.
Salts are safe, once they’re mixed, but the initial minute of mixing, when the essential oil is clumping still, and nothing is uniform? That’s where my problem was.
I was working with tiny amounts of essential oil, well diluted, safely measured. And I still managed to fill my mouth and nose with tiny bits of oil, which made me sneeze and itch and have now given me a sore throat.
THIS is why anyone with an ounce of sense asks you to not drink essential oils. THIS is why we practise good safety when making lotions, or creams, or scenting soap. This is also why I will be buying myself a very nice breathing mask at the hardware store, because it turns out, even all the sensible safety precautions may not be enough.
Now I was working with fairly human safe essential oils in the scheme of things. I’m pretty sure it was the lemon myrtle I breathed in, but the lavender has also given me a headache. Once I realised what was happening I irrigated my eyes and nose, and rinsed my throat with coconut oil to dilute the oils.
I am still going to have to wear the consequences of basically poisoning myself for the next few days, and I will not be making salts without a breathing mask again.
This is why we bang on about essential oils and safety. Just because essential oils come from nature, it does not make them perfectly safe. They are highly concentrated volatile chemicals and I urge you to be safe about using them. Research your oils – and listen to experts who do not work for MLM companies. Lots of things are safe at tiny doses, and toxic in slightly higher doses.
Learn from my mistake, because honestly, what’s the use of making mistakes if we can’t all learn from them?
