Cloves - Poison or flavor? page

[Knifegill]

Seeing lots of info about pesticide use and toxicity, but usually just for the essential oil. What about a pinch of plain old organic ground clove in my coffee? Long term use safe?

http://www.marinwater.org/documents/...il_8_28_08.pdf

Cloves

Clearly I could read these things all day long and get nowhere...anybody already do the digging on this one?

[sbhikes]

Cloves are really strong. Being so strong you will use such minute amounts I wouldn't worry about the fact that the concentrated clove oil is an herbicide.

[NorthernMonkeyGirl]

I would guess that your tongue would disintegrate before you could hit a critical dose of clove...

[Bananabonobo]

Actually, true story:
once i put too much clove in my curry. i could tell it was making my mouth a little bit funny, but i ate it anyway because I'm a bloody cheap Yankee and all that. (I have lots of stories like that...) then i went to bed. when i woke up, i realized i was dizzy and spacy; i tried taking a shower and dressing for work and by the time i'd completed those tasks, i was pretty much seeing the room spin. no sickness, just dizzy/floaty. so i called in and spent the day sleeping and barely moving my head. why do i know it was the cloves? there was nothing else potentially untoward, and it happened again when i ate the leftovers.

this is an anecdote; i tend to be fairly sensitive to stuff like that; BUT, as an anecdote, i'm sure it was the cloves that made me a bit fucked up there. i also use it to anesthetize and euthanize fish. take that for what it's worth.

to answer the OP question: i have never heard anything about time-cumulative clove flavourings being an issue; i don't think eugenol is something that would build up and make you sick, but it's probably worth checking google scholar for search terms like "long term eugenol exposure". cool question

[NorthernMonkeyGirl]

Aye, clove is used as an oral anaesthetic by ye olde housewives (hold a clove against toothache), powerful stuff.

[Jaradel]

There are also clove cigarettes, which can make you feel loopy if you smoke a more than a couple in a sitting. Not that I would know anything about that....