Essential Oil Toxicity For Pets
It is vitally important to know which essential oils should not to be used around your pets, on the basis that they are toxic to cats and dogs. It is also important to know which essential oils can prompt an allergic reaction within your cat or dog.
Some reactions can be very severe and can impede breathing. It is, therefore, vital to avoid using essential oils which may be problematic to your pets whilst you are in the same room as them, or which they are likely to frequent some time after you have been using potentially problematic essential oils…
Avoid Contact With Pets After Applying Some Essential Oils
It’s also important avoid stroking your pets when you still have oil based products on your hands which contain essential oils your pets are allergic to.
Essential Oil Toxicity Build Up
You may not notice any negative effects of using essential oils that are toxic to cats and dogs when using them around your pets… but, be assured, there are quite a few essential oils which are toxic to your pets, and they will build up toxic stores of these essential oils within their bodies over time if you consistently use toxic essential oils around them.
Essential Oils Cannot Be Contained
Aromatherapy oils are what are known as volatile oils. This is because they are made up of tiny molecules which can become easily air-borne. Just leaving the lid off an essential oil bottle will allow the contents to escape. But actively using essential oils / aromatherapy oils, either by blending them or applying them topically, will effectively turbo charge the distribution of them.
Interacting with aromatherapy oils helps to propel the volatile molecules into the air, where they will be inhaled by anyone present. This includes your pets.
Essential oils travel straight through the blood brain barrier into the brain. Plus they work intracellularly. This means that the molecules within essential oils are so tiny they can make their way into every cell within the body. This means that essential oils will affect every living creature which comes into contact with the essential oils at a profound systemic level.
Although Robert Tisserand, a leading authority on the safety of essential oils, says small exposures to any essential oil isn’t going to cause too many problems for most pets, it is still best to err on the side of caution due to the potential for the problems cause by the bioaccumulation of the essential oils with the body.
Essential Oils To Avoid
The following essential oils shouldn’t be applied to your pets and also shouldn’t be used in the same room as your pets…
This list has a lot of the aromatherapy oils which should also be avoided during pregnancy in humans, as can be seen in the article Using Essential Oils on the Wild As The Wind website.
- Star Anise Essential Oil
- Birch Essential Oil
- Boldo Essential Oil
- Calamus Essential Oil
- Camphor Essential Oil
- Cassia Essential Oil
- Cinnamon Essential Oil
- Citrus Oils (excluding Sweet Orange)
- Chenopodium Essential Oil
- Clove Essential Oil
- Garlic Essential Oil
- Goosefoot Essential Oil
- Horseradish Essential Oil
- Hyssop Essential Oil
- Juniper Essential Oil
- Mugwort Essential Oil
- Mustard Essential Oil
- Pennyroyal Essential Oil
- Pine Essential Oil
- Red or White Thyme Essential Oil
- Rue Essential Oil
- Santolina Essential Oil
- Sassafras Essential Oil
- Savory Essential Oil
- Tansy Essential Oil
- Tea Tree Essential Oil
- Terebinth Essential Oil
- Thuja Essential Oil
- Wintergreen Essential Oil
- Wormwood Essential Oil
- Yarrow Essential Oil
- Ylang Ylang Essential Oil
Bitter Almond base oil should also be avoided.
Aromatherapy Oils To Avoid If Your Pet Has Cancer
Cancer is an increasing problem among pets, especially cats and dogs.
The first aromatherapy oil on the list, Star Anise Essential Oil, is known to exert an oestrogenic influence on the user, but there are a couple of other oestrogenic essential oils which are not on the list, which should be avoided just in case your pet has an oestrogenic cancer.
I cover this more fully in the article Hormone Disrupting Essential Oils, but there’s only three aromatherapy oils on the list so there’s no harm in sharing it here as well:
- Star Anise Essential Oil
- Fennel Essential Oil
- Myrtle Essential Oil
Essential Oils Are Not The Root Cause Of Oestrogenic Cancers
Environmental toxicity is generally causing cancer statistics to rise in humans and animals. It’s plastics in our food supply, and toxic oestrogenic substances being used in our homes, schools and work environments which are causing the problem.
Please read this article for further information:
Weight Gain & Resistant Weight Loss
Anything which causes us to gain weight and then makes it impossible to lose the weight again is due to toxic burdens on the body which interfere with bodily functions at a systemic level. The Weight Gain & Resistant Weight Loss article deals with many of the toxins which disrupt our hormones, and those of our pets.
Toxic Essential Oils For Pets
I recently wrote an article outlining all of the risks of using toxic essential oils around your pets for Dogs Today Magazine.
This article also lists all of the essential oils which are toxic to cats and dogs, as well as other pets, and wildlife.
It also provides additional advice around toxic essential oils not covered in this article.
Firstly, I cannot stress enough about the quality of products which Rachel is very good at selling.
Secondly, I’m an avid reader of the varied topics of which Rachel writes so passionately from the heart. l may not always agree with what’s written but I usually learn something new.
The reason I was prompted to comment was that I’m in total agreement about the use of essential oils around pets. I keep 2 beautiful lizards and I never ever touch them with oily hands. In fact I’ve banned the use of essential oils anywhere near them. I wouldn’t put their health in jeopardy. Thank you Rachel for pointing out this topic.
Hi Karen,
I’m very glad you are aware of the dangers of using essential oils around pets, and I hope you continue to try and help educate people about this issue… as will I…
I also appreciate your commendations for the products I produce and for the articles I publish here and elsewhere on the internet.
I’m also glad that you’ve had the confidence to say that you don’t agree with everything I’ve written. In time, with new research and new understandings, I will doubtless disagree with some of what i have written also.
I really want to encourage you, and other readers, to comment on articles, especially if you read something that you don’t agree with. Rather than shooting anyone down in flames, I welcome readers insights with open arms, and will, of course, take the time to correct any misapprehensions, and will further explain what has not been understood fully etc…
I am very grateful to have access to the latest, cutting-edge research on matters of health and well being, but eventually this information will become old and out-moded, just like much of what was thought to be true within Western medicine.
Sadly, because we live within a capitalist model, all research, whether within Western medicine, or within alternative medicine, all have a commercial imperative. It is, therefore, vitally important that we cast a skeptical eye, as you so clearly do, over any information pertaining to health and the protocols advocated for dealing with them.
I personally like to use the medical insights gleaned from practitioners who have personally arrived at their speciality through first having had to heal themselves. These health advocates have waded through a lot of the mis-information churned out by the big medical / pharmacological sources, and have fine-tuned effective methods of addressing the health issues that they, themselves, have suffered first hand… I find their insights to be a lot more reliable than those of primarily profit-driven entities.
Aside from the logic of my approach, I am perhaps slightly more inclined to trust health advocates who have had to heal themselves because Western medicine, and in some instances alternative practitioners, have let them down, due to the fact that I myself am on such a health seeking journey.
Five years ago I was so immensely fatigued, and suffering from extreme levels of brain fog, that I couldn’t function normally. It has taken a lot of time and a lot of research to recover my health to the level I’ve managed so far… and there’s some way to go yet…
I also think it’s why I feel so passionately about helping others understand their health challenges… I’ve been down so many health protocol cul-de-sacs and wasted so much time feeling unwell that I want people to be able to avoid all of the things that don’t work, or didn’t work for me…
I don’t receive payment for anything I write these days, even though I was a professional writer before falling ill… I publish these days because I have a deep compulsion to help people see their way to a cure for their maladies when all they are usually being offered is a toxic means of managing their symptoms.
Nothing’s perfect, and ideas and insights will change… but, we can but try! I’m just glad that you, at least, are getting something out of what I write.
Please continue to comment.
Thanks.