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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

> Natural essential oils, for example, can be used to make safe home scenting products, such as “DIY” scented candles.

This sentence comes after a one sentence gap from a paragraph warning that the plug-ins contain volatile organic compounds(VOCs). Natural essential oils also contain VOCs. It’s how you smell them.

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Burning candles also releases VOCs (and soot) into the air. My old roommate was a daily candle burner, and the walls in her bedroom ended up absolutely covered in soot after a few years.

Not only that, many (but not all) essential oils are very toxic to cats and maybe other pets too - blanketly calling them "safe" is just plain wrong. Like very, very wrong.

It's probably not a good idea to diffuse essential oils in general, they are VOCs after all, but it's an especially bad idea if you have pets.

On top of that, essential oil purity is probably not exactly well regulated. Depending what chemicals are used to do the extraction, there can be nasty stuff left over not to mention adulterants or other random stuff.

It might be more accurate to say that natural essential oils are VOCs.

And the essential comes from the fact that the oils are the essence of the plants(what remains when you boil one for a really long time), not because they are essential for humans...

Don't use candle essential oil diffusers. Candles burn too hot and burn the things you don't want to burn. There are electricly heated diffusers that warm up the oil to a lower temperature. But, don't use essential oil diffusers if you have pets. Pets can be extremely sensitive to essential oils and some are toxic to some pets while safe to humans. There are ways to treat pets with essential oils, but the process is very delicate. You essentially open a bottle and put it at a distance from your pet. If the pet approaches it himself and shows signs of liking it, you can look into ways of incorporating some of this oil into pet's life, but gently so as to not overwhelm him. For human use, just smell it out of the bottle or rub it on specific points on your body. Look up relevant literature for details. Most important thing is that just by smelling it you can immediately tell if that specific essential oil is good for you. Don't use them just because someone said they're beneficial.

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