What is it?
An essential oil from the peel of the lemon, Citrus limon, usually cold-pressed from the rind of the ripe fruit and sometimes distilled. Its main component is limonene. It scents cosmetics, soaps and other personal care products and flavors foods, and in the CIR’s 2014 review it had more reported cosmetic uses than any other citrus peel oil.
Key information
- Cold-pressed lemon oil can cause skin reactions in sunlight (phototoxicity), so IFRA limits it to 2 percent in products left on the skin, with no limit for rinse-off products.
- It contains far less of the phototoxic compound bergapten (5-MOP) than lime oil: about 0.0001 to 0.0087 percent, compared with 0.17 to 0.33 percent.
- The CIR Expert Panel concluded in 2014 that citrus peel oils are safe in cosmetics when leave-on products contain no more than 15 ppm bergapten and are formulated to be non-sensitizing and non-irritating.
- New products placed on the EU market since August 2026 must list it as Citrus Limon Peel Oil above 0.001 percent in leave-on or 0.01 percent in rinse-off products.
More information
Lemon oil is pressed from the outer rind of the fruit or distilled; steam distillation removes the non-volatile furocoumarins responsible for phototoxicity. Limonene is reported at 38 to 96 percent of cold-pressed lemon peel oils, with smaller amounts of beta-pinene, gamma-terpinene and citral. In the Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR) report, lemon peel oil had 490 reported cosmetic uses, at concentrations up to 0.5 percent.
The CIR Expert Panel’s main concerns were phototoxicity, irritation and allergy. It agreed that following the International Fragrance Association’s (IFRA) standards prevents phototoxicity; those standards limit cold-pressed lemon oil to 2 percent in leave-on skin products and cap bergapten from all citrus oils at 15 ppm in such products. An older mouse study found that undiluted citrus oils, including lemon, promoted skin tumors started by a chemical carcinogen, possibly through repeated irritation, so the Panel also required products to be formulated to be non-irritating. Lemon oil was not genotoxic in the laboratory tests the Panel reviewed.
Allergy is the other consideration. The EU’s Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS) classed expressed lemon oil as an established contact allergen in 2012; in one large study, 0.3 percent of 6,467 patients tested with it reacted. Limonene, its main component, becomes a stronger allergen when it oxidizes in air, so fresh, tightly closed products are preferable. If you react to citrus scents, or plan to be in the sun after using a leave-on product, check labels for Citrus Limon Peel Oil and Limonene.
Sources: CIR: Safety Assessment of Citrus-Derived Peel Oils as Used in Cosmetics (2014); IFRA: Standard for lemon oil cold pressed (Amendment 49); SCCS: Opinion on fragrance allergens in cosmetic products (2012); EUR-Lex: Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1545 on labelling of fragrance allergens
