Health Cana­da is pulling the last of cit­ronel­la-based bug sprays off the shelves by the end of De­cem­ber be­cause of "the ab­sence of ad­e­quate safe­ty da­ta." The es­sen­tial oil has been used as an in­sect re­pel­lent in Cana­da for decades.

The move has left sci­en­tists who ad­vised Health Cana­da on the is­sue be­fud­dled by the ban. So are many con­sumers who pre­fer nat­ur­al bug sprays over ones with syn­thet­ic chem­i­cals like DEET.

"It's the ba­sis of the ban that I don't re­al­ly un­der­stand," says tox­i­col­o­gist Sam Kacew.

In­sect re­pel­lents are con­sid­ered pes­ti­cides so they must meet strict safe­ty stan­dards. In 2004, Health Cana­da pro­posed phas­ing out cit­ronel­la-based bug sprays be­cause of new ques­tions about its safe­ty.

Small man­u­fac­tur­ers who couldn't af­ford to sub­mit de­tailed safe­ty da­ta saw their lines dis­con­tin­ued at the end of 2012. Those who sub­mit­ted what da­ta they could and tried to chal­lenge the ban are now to see their prod­ucts phased out at the end of this year.

In 2005, Kacew sat on an in­de­pen­dent sci­en­tif­ic pan­el to re­view Health Cana­da's po­si­tion. He says the pan­el be­lieved the study that led the gov­ern­ment to ques­tion cit­ronel­la's safe­ty was flawed, in part be­cause it ex­am­ined what hap­pened when ro­dents in­gest­ed the oil. "Hu­mans are not go­ing to drink cit­ronel­la," he says.

The de­part­ment told CBC that "the pan­el sup­port­ed Health Cana­da's ap­proach," but Kacew re­futes that. He says the team of sci­en­tists con­clud­ed that cit­ronel­la was safe as long as it didn't con­tain methyl eugenol, an im­pu­ri­ty that could be a po­ten­tial car­cino­gen. "In gen­er­al, most of these cit­ronel­la oils that were avail­able for us to ex­am­ine did not con­tain im­pu­ri­ties, and they were re­gard­ed by us to be ba­si­cal­ly safe," he says.

Mon­tre­al com­pa­ny, Druide, has been sell­ing gov­ern­ment-ap­proved cit­ronel­la sprays and lo­tions since 1995.

"Where I am very sad is, in the end, [Health Cana­da] doesn't have any­thing against cit­ronel­la, ex­cept ques­tions about it," says Druide's own­er, Alain Re­naud.

He says he spent five years prov­ing to Health Cana­da that his re­pel­lent didn't con­tain methyl eugenol.

But Re­naud says that as soon as he won that bat­tle the gov­ern­ment "came back and said we still have ques­tions and we need a com­plete tox­i­co­log­i­cal re­port on many gen­er­a­tions of an­i­mals."

That may be a stan­dard ap­proach, but Re­naud even­tu­al­ly gave up his fight be­cause his com­pa­ny doesn't be­lieve in an­i­mal test­ing, and didn't have the es­ti­mat­ed CAN$1 mil­lion need­ed to fund a large-scale sci­en­tif­ic study.

Druide's cit­ronel­la-based bug spray was a best­seller for the com­pa­ny, which man­u­fac­tures or­gan­ic per­son­al care prod­ucts.

Re­naud says he's had to lay off five em­ploy­ees be­cause of the ban and has lost up to a mil­lion dol­lars spent on mar­ket­ing his prod­uct and pro­vid­ing re­search for Health Cana­da. "At the end of maybe, five, ten years of fight­ing, [Heath Cana­da] gets all our en­er­gy," he says.

DEET passed Health Cana­da's scruti­ny be­cause the man­u­fac­tur­ers pro­vid­ed the re­quired safe­ty da­ta. But cit­ronel­la–an ex­tract from lemon grass–has nev­er been patent­ed, which makes it an un­at­trac­tive in­vest­ment for cost­ly stud­ies.

"If the mar­ket was such that this prod­uct was gen­er­at­ing mil­lions of dol­lars, then the in­dus­try would have done some­thing re-ac­tive to try and get [cit­ronel­la] back on the mar­ket," said Kacew.

That's the prob­lem with oth­er es­sen­tial oils as well. They may be ef­fec­tive as bug re­pel­lents, but no one has yet fund­ed the stud­ies to prove they're safe.

Tracey TieF made and sold a nat­ur­al bug spray with es­sen­tial oils in­clud­ing laven­der and rose­mary for sev­en years be­fore Health Cana­da shut her down re­cent­ly.

The prob­lem was that she hadn't reg­is­tered her prod­uct and done any safe­ty stud­ies. Re­search has sug­gest­ed DEET could be harm­ful to the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem. But Health Cana­da states on its Web site that "reg­is­tered in­sect re­pel­lents con­tain­ing DEET can be used safe­ly when ap­plied as di­rect­ed."

Come 2015, cit­ronel­la bug sprays won't be en­tire­ly out of reach, you will just have to cross the bor­der. The prod­uct will still be avail­able in the US. (CBC)