Essential Oil Misinformation: Tsuga – Just Because It's Hemlock Doesn't Mean It's Poison

The amount of misinformation about essential oils online and offline still amazes me. People who claim to be in the know blatantly ignore research, facts and common sense to cling to old wife's tales.

I was shocked today, when I ran across a web page about Tsuga essential oil and it stated that the needles of the hemlock tree were poisonous. How could anyone even slightly educated in essential oils confuse the coniferous TREE with the poisonous HERB?

Here's what the web page says:

"The tree is also known as hemlock, and its needles were used in antiquity to make poisons such as the poison drunk by Socrates when he took his own life."

Nothing could be further from the truth!

Tsuga is a coniferous evergreen tree and is completely unrelated to the poisonous hemlock herb. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the herb, except the similar common name. It's needles were NEVER used to make poisons – Tsuga is NOT a poisonous plant.

According to Wikipedia:

"The common name hemlock is derived from a perceived similarity in the smell of the crushed foliage to that of the unrelated herb poison hemlock; see hemlock for other senses of the word. Unlike the herb, the species of Tsuga are not poisonous."

Yet here is someone who calls themselves an educated "healing professional" who claims to know a great deal about essential oils and wants to share "good information with people about natural healing remedies" putting out completely false information that even a little research would have cleared up.

This is just one example of how misinformation is spread about the "dangers of essential oils." Most misinformation is based on hearsay, rumors, old established (erroneous) beliefs, convictions, and let me add, a great deal of self-righteousness.

I experienced this first-hand when I opened my first web site on essential oils back in the late 90s and regularly got hate mail (via email). It came from people (who wouldn't give their name) who obviously felt THEIR knowledge was superior and would shut my site down if they could. They attacked me for discussing recent research and proven facts about certain essential oils because it went against their beliefs. It surprised and baffled me because the research was so clear and unbiased. Yet they not only refused to believe it, they hated me for writing about it.

Most of that furor has died down over the years as the research has become more established. But here again the same problem arises on a web page that appears as the second listing in a Google search for Tsuga essential oil.

There's nothing I can do about that web site, but I can make you aware of the vast amount of misinformation out there about essential oils. Many oils have been terribly misaligned with complete myths attached to them.

Much of this goes on because an error, once printed, gets repeated as gospel forevermore. And it's all too easy to print something on the web.

You'd be better off not believing everything you read or hear about essential oils…and checking your facts for yourself.