Ask Lemmy

I think some mods are overly jumpy with chemistry type questions because uninformed morons will confidently answer the wrong thing and the mods are afraid it will get someone hurt. That or the subs in question just aren't geared for this kind of Q&A. You'd probably get better responses from a chemistry subreddit.

Scent compounds being potentially hazardous to some minor degree in their super concentrated form isn't a huge issue, because that's not how they're going to be experienced and it's hard to find anything that isn't harmful in some quantity. The alchemist Paracelsus, who pioneered evidence backed approaches to pharmaceutical medicine wrote the old adage "The dose makes the poison." Even water can kill you if you drink too much of it all at once, and pure oxygen is an extremely dangerous substance even though we need it to breathe.

That said, I happen to know a bit about chemistry and just did a bit of reading. It looks like rose oil comes in two forms - one produced by steam distillation, and one produced by solvent extraction. The one produced via solvent extraction is more common, more concentrated, and according to Safety Data Sheets (SDS) I was able to find, has more potential health hazards associated with it. The other form, known as Rose Otto, is produced via steam distillation and is less concentrated. This means you will need more and will need to adjust your formulation, but according to the SDS this is a pretty safe substance. If your concern is potential hazards of making your soap during manufacturing, then that may be a better option I guess. I still think that it's fine to use substances that are toxic in quantities that will never make it into the final product.