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Unfortunately, the essential oils, as well as the rose water and distillate are toxic to aquatic life when poured down the drain (as the case for shower gel). These are not harmful for humans, as long as it stays on clothes, skin, etc. That's what I found with pretty much all available products when checking the FDS / MSDS.
Make your own rose water from locally obtained rose petals. All rose petals are eventually going to fall on the ground and decay. Any toxic compounds in the rose petals are going to end up released into the environment and washed into the watershed eventually. If you use them for bath soap, you're just temporarily using them in the path they would already take if left to their own devices. If anything, you're decreasing the contamination to the environment, as anything that goes down your shower drain will be filtered by the municipal water treatment plant before being released into the watershed.
In what concentration? The SDS is an essential tool, but you need to be able to interpret it. Almost any chemical you look at is going to have an LC50 or EC50 and some kind of data on toxicity to aquatic life. That doesn't necessarily mean it's so toxic it should never enter the water stream, it just means it shouldn't be put into water sources in high concentrations.
Looking at a basic 'geranium oil' SDS, it's mostly Citronellol, Geraniol, and Linalool, with miniscule amounts of a handful of others. That is probably not the best environmentally. Since Linalool and Citronellol are both antimicrobial and antifungal agents they absolutely will be somewhat harmful to aquatic life, though probably not significantly in the quantities you'd be using for shower gel.
That said, looking at Linalool, the more "toxic" component, the most sensitive subject is water fleas, with an EC50 of 20mg/L over 48hours. That means 50% of water fleas living in a medium of 20mg/L Linalool for 48 experienced harmful effects from the substance.
So, I searched a random shower gel recipe and got a basic starting point let's say we're going to use 7 drops of rose oil in 7 oz of liquid soap (and whatever other stuff). So that's one drop per oz, using a rough estimate (0.05ml/drop) that gives us a concentration of 0.169% or 1.69 mL/L in your soap. A mL of liquid typically weighs roughly a gram (very roughly, but we're just looking for a general ballpark here). Linalool makes up about 8% of the rose oil, so your overall Linalool concentration ends up roughly 135mg/L. So, the straight gel would definitely be harmful to aquatic life. But it's not going into the water system straight, it's mixed with the water used for bathing. Let's say you use an entire oz of soap for a shower, and we've got a short shower using only 10 gallons of water. So one Oz of gel has 3.9mg of Linalool diluted into 37.8 liters of water, making a concentration around 0.1 mg/L. That's not much, and that's just going into more water to be diluted further.
It's your creation, and it's up to you to determine what level of potential harm you're comfortable with, but moreso I hope this helps you understand better what the SDS really means and how to interpret it.
The SDS will be for the oil itself, not at the final concentration used in the shampoo or whatever.
Are you sure the final product is at a toxic concentration? Probably the detergent itself is more dangerous as used. That's just a guess though.
I really get what you’re saying and obviously I intended to use a small amount to get a nice fragrance. But if enough people are going to use the product, then it can become problematic. Can I sell it then with a straight face as a truly eco friendly product? I dont think so..
Everyone who uses it will contribute to the dilution. It’s not like 1:1000 dilution from a single person’s shower becomes 1:100 if 10 people use it or 1:1 for a thousand. No, they each will use large amounts of water that dilute it down.
People don’t pour their soap down the sink (at least not for any normal uses); they use a small amount which gets washed away with a lot more water.
I’d suggest finding what concentration things are dangerous at and whether they break down organically or not. Then you can aim to keep your product below that concentration if you can so even if someone did pour it down the drain it wouldn’t be harmful. And if you confirm it will break down, you know you aren’t contributing to long-term build up either.
Since so much is harmful, you might want to go the opposite route. What is not harmful to aquatic life? Is there anything with a nice smell?
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find anything that’s fragrant and fully non toxic. There are bio, eco and vegan claims, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be toxic..
Have you tried aquatic plants? Some of them must have a smell when taken out. That might be fun to check them out.
I don’t know if there are any pleasantly fragrant aquatic plants. I will check it out, this is a neat idea.
I hope something works out for you.
I actually checked a few options and anything fragrant is outside the water for pollinators, which makes sense. I also did check essential oils from water lilies and still hazardous to water life.. the search continues.
Pollinators near water or in swamps?
When they're used in cleaning concentrations, are they that harmful? I see commercial products with them, so they can't be super terrible. Drain water still has to go thru municipal water systems before it's released back into nature.
I think they are harmful. Although I am not sure to what extent. What worries me is making a product that gets popular and enough people use it to make a (negative) impact on the environment if I don’t carefully choose the ingredients.
It's a good concern, but it's not a "right-now" problem. It shouldn't stop you from doing your thing, until it's a real problem. It's not urgent. When it becomes a problem, you likely will have more resources to solve it.