Respecting Essential Oils

If you ever wondered how we decide essential oil blends in our products, look no further. The relationship between Oak and Olive and essential oil usage is one of deep respect. The essential oils we use bring lovely scent combinations and benefits but we also work with the understanding these are powerful ingredients and should be treated as such. Endless hours of education, research and the desire to create the safest ratios possible took us half way around the world.

Here in America, essential oil safety education is seriously lacking. Last Thanksgiving, I found recipes via Instagram on how to flavor my dishes using essential oils (pleeeeeease don't do this). A few years ago I was told to put cinnamon bark essential oil in the bath for a "gorgeous scent experience"by a MLM distributor. You know what I got? Hives. One simple search and I would have known both of these pieces of horrible advice are actually the most basic essential oil safety practices. Essential oils 101 if you will.

So, we crossed the pond (virtually) and found that Europe not only puts out research and education on the safety use of essential oils, they also have strict restrictions on usage based on weight and the category of how the essential oil will be used. For example, there is a difference between how much lemon essential oil can be used in cold process soap vs. lip balm. Let's dive a little deeper.

Lemon essential oil is everywhere. From DIY cleaners to lotions. But did you know using lemon essential oil (or most citrus oils for that matter) can be unfriendly to the skin? This is because they are phototoxic. Simple terms you cannot use these oils on the skin over a certain dilution and then hit the beach. The sun could create a reaction on your skin. The opposite we want from our skin-loving products we started this company looking for. There are exceptions to this rule like sweet orange. The rules change for lip products, change again for soap, for bath fizzes; you get the idea. Diving into a European state of mind when it comes to these oils allowed us to open doors to truly better products.

Our products are all made (zero exceptions!) based on the practices for safe use directly from The International Fragrance Association (IFRA). The IFRA is constantly updating ratios and dilutions safe for use. For example, recently they changed standards for spearmint essential oil. New research showed spearmint is no longer safe above a VERY conservative amount. Let's break that down!

All of our soaps are made with a 5% or less essential oil blend per pound of oils used in the soap (PPO). Spearmint can only make up 5% of that blend. Mindblowing! This means for a standard loaf mold of soap using 1,814 grams of oils and butters; the maximum use rate for spearmint is 4.5 grams. So tiny, almost non-existent for safe use on the body. Although this new standard for this specific oil is just about a year old; I still see it at unsafe levels all over the place. Don't get me wrong, I adore the smell of spearmint essential oil. However, the research is there and it is time to say good bye to this one as standard in our products.

Here at Oak and Olive, it is not going to be the strongest smelling products walking out our door; that was never our goal when we set out on this journey. We are committed to utilizing the strictest usage rates possible to bring you a pleasant scent in the safest way we can find. We will never stop education and research to reach this goal. While we cannot guarantee no one will ever have a reaction (allergic reactions are out of our control, unfortunately); we can guarantee that we are doing our best to provide the best. We take essential oil use so seriously. There is research, many calculations made and cross checked before the gloves even go on. I started this for my own family; they are my why. That will never change here.

Handmade with love,

Emma