Flavoring with essential oils

[jigtg]

aromamedical.com/articles/internal.html
kobashi.co.uk
"All of our 100% Pure Essential Oils are FCC or food grade ..." nowfoods.com/?cat_id=3514 .

Found some aromatherapy shop is selling 60 1/2ml EOs for 20 pounds. Not food grade unfortunatelly.

According to wiki: "LD50 for most essential oils or their main components are 0.5-10 g/kg (orally or skin test)". No sign of where this information came to wikipedia. What I don't know is why aromatherapists are so alarmed about taking EO internally. Who in their right mind would think zipping, say 10 grams of EO(that smells like hell) is safe? Watch out for allergies though. Also, I read somewhere that mixing certain oils can create some hefty toxins.

Some magic words for finding quality EOs:
- ISO (International Standards Organisation)
- AFNOR (French ISO member)
- FCC
- Supplement Facts (aromatherapy4u.wordpress.com/using-essential-oils/)

 

[Nazareth]

I'd steet clear of inhaling essential oils after they are atomized- epsecially in the amounts we would be doing by esmoking constantly. I know you can inhale some essentials, but generally this is done in very small quantities- not in constant vaping sessions liek we would be doing with esmoking. Don't forget, atomizing and hten vaporizing changes the chemical structures of the elements being vaporized, so it might be possible that doign so negates the health benifits of hte essentials

 

[jigtg]

Yes, I'm aware that chemical structure might easily change when atomized. Nearly all EOs are steam distilled which pretty much proves how delicate these aromas are. Unfortunatelly, I have not found much info on what those resulting compounds might be.

However, I was under the impression that some of the "bakery flavors" are made of essential oils. So why would they be any safer?

 

[jigtg]

List of mccormick extracts with "oil of x" listed as ingredient. According to Essential oil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "oil of x" means EO of x.

Orange Extract
McCormick Product Detail - Pure Orange Extract
OIL OF ORANGE
Orange oil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Limonene - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Imitation Almond Extract
McCormick Product Detail - Imitation Almond Extract
BENZALDEHYDE
Benzaldehyde - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Almond - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pure Anise Extract
McCormick Product Detail - Pure Anise Extract
OIL OF ANISE
Anethole - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pure Mint Extract
McCormick Product Detail - Pure Mint Extract
OIL OF SPEARMINT, AND OIL OF PEPPERMINT
Mentha spicata - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carvone - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pure Peppermint Extract
McCormick Product Detail - Pure Peppermint Extract
OIL OF PEPPERMINT
Peppermint - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pure Almond Extract
McCormick Product Detail - Pure Almond Extract
OIL OF BITTER ALMOND

Pure Lemon Extract
McCormick Product Detail - Pure Lemon Extract
OIL OF LEMON
Lemon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Citral - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some of these are perhaps little exotic tobacco flavors.
Aroma compound - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia lists some major compounds in EOs.

 

[TropicalBob]

That's a pretty good list of all the extracts we avoid.

Beyond your atomizer, consider how your lungs might like a regular coating of oil. Not worth the payoff to even try oils. Extracts that are considered safe have PG, alcohol, water and/or flavoring not from oils.

There are many, many flavors available without oil as an ingredient. McCormick's is a brand most e-smokers avoid like the plague. Go Bickford or Cook's.

 

[jigtg]

"DIY tobacco& nicotine flavor... without tobacco" thread paper
talks about < 0.1ul(0.001ml) of oil per cigarette in some tests they did. Now I don't know how long it would take lungs to absord that much but I'm having hard time imagining considering how much tar is in one cig.
It seems typical to EOs that they are not very solulable to water, which gives reason to suspect lungs do not absord them very fast. Some(all?) are solulable to alcohol or PG which I think is the main reason why these are found in extracts.

Bickford and Cook's say their extracts are "Natural flavors" and, as I understand, if you overrule EO and artificial flavors, you would have no way of making those flavors. I understand "natural flavors" in ingredients list to mean chemicals extracted from EOs or otherwise identical.

mccormick extracts destroying atomizers is a bit hard to explain. Either mccormick products are just crap or some EOs just have enough chemicals that can't take the heat.

cooksvanilla.com mentions quite a few flavors with "oil of x" as ingredient. Which ones have you tried?

Shipping to EU costs too much.

 

[Kate]

Jigtg, is it the case that food flavours and extracts are made from concentrated essential oils? Does the extraction method determine whether the extract is an oil or not?

I noticed that rose otto and other oils are used in ecig.com liquid. This is something I am personally concerned about, I would rather choose my own flavourings. I would not choose to inhale oil if I could avoid it so I try to find flavourings that don't list oil as an ingredient. I understand that there is no guarantee that the extraction process for the flavour does not involve oil.

Essential oils are very concentrated, when used in food flavourings they are usually diluted for us already. I would be concerned about how to judge a safe dose for flavouring eliquid ... if there even is a safe dose. To me oil is high risk and it's something I try to avoid.

I appreciate your trying to inform us about this, it may be, as you seem to be saying that using oil in some form or another for flavouring is unavoidable. In which case we should try to do this in the safest way possible given the lack of testing in relation to inhaling these substances.

 

[jigtg]

By definition, essential oil contains all chemicals that have flavor or aroma. My belief is that EO becomes extract when you start dropping chemicals from it. So if you have "flavor extract" of some plant etc., it shouldn't really make any
difference if it was isolated directly from plant etc. or from essential oil.

Should you take eg. CAS 000127-91-3, 000138-86-3 and 000099-85-4 of Lemon Oil Analysis Batch kb01028 , you'd call this "natural flavor extract".
The term "oil" in essential oil is a bit misleading. I mean, if you take only CAS 000138-86-3 of lemon oil and call it "flavor extract", it would still have nearly identical chemical properties because it is 72.01% CAS 000138-86-3. There should be no reason to use oil to extract EO. You can find pure oil in extracts because some EOs are solulable to oil, so it just makes a good carrier for the flavor.

Ok, found plenty of useful information today:
http://members.ift.org/NR/rdonlyres/B9066605-9760-4E67-82BA-B2AA8D343020/0/0805gras22_complete.pdf
Safety Summary of Citronella Oil as a Flavouring Agent (Safety Evaluation of Citronella Oil for Food Uses)
Summary of Evaluations Performed by the JECFA - Table of Contents
Summary of Evaluations Performed by JECFA
Acceptable daily intake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Good EO database like ESO 2000 - The Complete Database of Essential Oils would be almost necessary to pull of these calculations. Less concentrated chemicals can assumed to be toxic to ease calculations without having to go through the hole list.
Also LDO doesn't take account the fact that chemicals build up in body so it is best to use ADI instead.

Anyway, I'll start harassing kobashi now. Perhaps they can suggest some EOs to investigate and/or can provide more info.

 

[Kate]

Sorry to ask silly questions but I'm a bit confused by the flavourings and oils issue. To get flavour in our eliquid we are already using a certain amount of oil which probably comes from essential oil - is that correct?

Do you use essential oils for flavouring your own liquid Jigtg? Do you have to measure it in tiny doses?

 

[TropicalBob]

Add me to the confused list. I have no idea what his bottom line is .. and that's all I really care about, not some chemistry lecture with EO and CAS and ESO and LDO and NAACP and FBI and CIA.

Bottom line summary needed without jargon discourse.

 

[Kate]

Another thread about oil here - http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/health-safety-e-smoking/2116-anyone-know-how-test-oil.html has some useful information that relates to this discussion. Particularly Mihai's post (I don't know if it's bad practice to cross post but here goes anyway) -

"you shouldn't worry about the essential oils in the way you worry now (some of them are really dangerous, but not because they are oils )

Most of the aromas you inhale in any brand of cart are made with/from essential oils. Even the tobacco aroma is practically an essential oil.

The oils we must avoid are the oils used in commercial flavorings to dilute the essential oils or the aroma esters.

The confusion comes form the fact that 'oil' is a pretty generic term and because when you hear 'oil' you think it must be like the vegetable oil you use to cook.

An essential oil is much too concentrated to use in normal consumer flavoring - you'll need, let's say - 0.001 ml of rose oil to obtain 1 l of rose vodka Since this kind of quantities are hard to measure in a kitchen, and for price considerations (3kg rose petals yields only 1ml rose oil), solvents are used to dilute them.

depending on the specific proprieties of the essential oil (in what is soluble) they use as solvents water, alcohol, propylene glycol or oils (vegetable or nut oils - like Jojoba, Coconut, High-oleic Safflower, Olive oil, Sunflower oil, Almond oil, Avocado oil, Shea Butter, Cocoa Butter or Seaweed extracts).


So, you should use for vaping just those flavors diluted with anything else than oils. You can use essential oils but be prepared to measure very small quantities (see an example in jgtg's reply in DIY tobacco& nicotine flavor... without tobacco)"

It sounds to me like what is being said is that when flavour is extracted it usually becomes an oil in some shape or form. Essential oils are unadulterated essences, some of which we can dilute to make food grade flavourings. They are very concentrated and can be dangerous (?). Inhaling the small amount of oil present in flavouring is nothing to be concerned about but we should not use solutions that use carrier oils.

It's funny how we have to piece together little bits of information from different people to make a cohesive picture. Many hands make light work they say and two heads are better than one, with our collective intelligence we should be able to come up with something informative. Unless of course too many cooks spoil the broth!

 

[jigtg]

Bottom line is that to know Acceptable Daily Intake(ADI) for specific Essential Oil(EO), chemical structure must be considered.
List of ADIs of many chemicals can be found at Summary of Evaluations Performed by JECFA. What we want to calculate is how much of some EO can be taken daily without exceeding ADI of any individual chemical that it has.

Safety Summary of Citronella Oil as a Flavouring Agent (Safety Evaluation of Citronella Oil for Food Uses)
talks about this as well. Instead of calculating how much would be safe, they assume some intake and calculate whether it is safe or not.

I have not ordered any oils yet because there is still lack of info on the decomposition part of EO.
That 1.5 µg/person/day rule isn't exactly valid if decomposition happens.

Information becoming dispersed is really fault of this being a forum. Wiki would be better but would be more demanding to use.

 

[Kate]

"I have not ordered any oils yet because there is still lack of info on the decomposition part of EO." So you're saying that you personally don't use essential oils as flavourings because their suitability for this purpose is unknown? They might not be safe for home mixing?

I love wikis, they're a great resource but forums are good too. I like being able to develop ideas, discussions and debates over time and the idea that anyone can chip in with little gems of information. Forums are more fun too, humour can shine through, there is more emotion; a wiki just deals with cold facts, there is no interaction.

 

[jigtg]

"I have not ordered any oils yet because there is still lack of info on the decomposition part of EO." So you're saying that you personally don't use essential oils as flavourings because their suitability for this purpose is unknown? They might not be safe for home mixing?

Professional opinion wouldn't hurt. Mihai?
http://webdeb.com/oils/gras-safety.htm
One drop could be 0.045455ml which is 45 times more than what I had in mind for flavoring one cig worth of e-liquid. I still don't know how high amounts are actually needed so I'm just going to order some EO and see.
I'm still going to do the ADI calculations on everything I try.

School just started so I no longer have time to research this.

I love wikis, they're a great resource but forums are good too. I like being able to develop ideas, discussions and debates over time and the idea that anyone can chip in with little gems of information. Forums are more fun too, humour can shine through, there is more emotion; a wiki just deals with cold facts, there is no interaction.

Right.

 

[Kate]

"I still don't know how high amounts are actually needed so I'm just going to order some EO and see.
I'm still going to do the ADI calculations on everything I try."
Please let us know how it works out for you, as far as I know nobody has reported trying essential oils in diy liquid so your experience will help us to see what the possibilities are.

Be careful though, don't overdose or anything, it's not worth it if it makes you ill.

 

[MagusSteele]

One thing about essential oils.
Burnt/heated, they do not always taste or smell like they are suppost to. Very few do.
I didnt read all that info but i'm guessing you know the differences between synthetic and natural, and blends, as well as extract and oil.
For the juice, I would say the oil would be best, however, all those cautions above apply.

 

[Mihai]

Professional opinion wouldn't hurt. Mihai?

Just to be sure it's clear: I have absolutely no professional qualifications in this area!

Every EO has a different formula so the decomposition should be researched separately for all of them. On the other hand, if you stick to the flavors you already use in your e-cigs then you get the same decomposition substances - which might be good or bad... I am sure nobody researched this, we are not even sure how bad PG is, so flavors decomposition analisys I doubt will ever come


My short answer to this issue would be: don’t play with essential oils if you don’t know what you are doing.

Every one of those oils have different safety limits, try to find them first. Then use a much much less than that , if you find the flavor is not enough you can add later more.

To be able to use essential oils safely you need to read a lot. They are not your cheap flavor from the bakery, they are highly concentrated and, most of them are, at those concentrations, at least irritating to the skin or other parts of your body. Most of the shops that sell them have a lot of links about the safety of all of them, lists with banned essences, material safety data sheets etc. Here are some links:
Index of essential oils.
Essential oils aromatherapy oils Soapmaking
Essential Oil Hazards, Warnings and Guidelines


On the other hand there is nothing too esoteric about them, any cart and e-liquid you buy, from any company; almost any food you eat and any drink use them. If you use them with caution and knowledge you can do whatever the commercial companies do. None of them were ever clinically tested so, if you don’t get close to the safety limits (which you must know), your homemade apple e-liquid will be just as safe or just as unhealthy as the apple flavored chewing gum Wrigley’s sells.

There are natural essences, obtained by distillation, cold pressing or extracted with solvents. The latter method is not food grade as it might contain traces of those solvents in the final product.

There are also artificial essences – some use various chemical reaction to obtain a similar substance to the flavor component, when it’s too costly to separate it from other dangerous substances present in the natural extract (i.e. almond oil is very hard to separate from the prussic acid, which is lethal in very small doses, so most of the stuff with almond taste uses now artificial almond flavor). This is nothing to care about as h2o is h2o no matter how what you combine to get it. Other kind of artificial essences mimic the flavor of a too costly component or of a toxic essential oil.



I’m still waiting for my 30+ essential oils pack from barry’s farm to arrive. I will play with them but I have plenty of time on my hands right now so I’ll make sure I know everything there is to know about them. I want to try to mix them in crazy ways, not just to make vanilla PG. If just a plain, normal flavor e-liquid is what you want you better stick to commercial e-liquid or, for diy e-liq, to PG/alcohol based food flavors.

 

[jigtg]

Alright. I'm thinking of getting OILSSHOP.COM (same set which I was talking about earlier) . They are obviously really crappy quality but the price is right since they are available in EU. This is just to find what flavors I like so no inhaling and puffs limited to say 10 per day. That would give me a safety factor of more than 20 to compensate for the crappy quality. Apparently they do not know what method they used to make those EOs so little uncertainity comes from there. Mihai, do you know how toxic these solvents are?

 

[Kate]

Think carefully what you test on your body. Saving money is no comfort if you ruin your health. Consider buying good quality essential oils if you're determined to try them in vapour. At least try to find some with as few impurities as possible so you are aware of what you are taking in. Remember, they are untested for the purpose you propose.

 

[Mihai]

please don't use them if you don't know how they got it.
do not use absolutes or concretes, use only essentials!
Use absolutes only if you are absolutely sure they used supercritical CO2. but these things you won't find if they are not the manufacturers. so the safe bet is to go only for the essentials.

You most likely won't die if you use solvent extracted absolutes instead of essentials but why make the vaping a more 'unknown' experience than it already is.