Using Tea Tree Essential Oils for Skin Care

Tea Tree Oil (Melaleuca alternifolia) has many remarkable properties. When crushed and distilled, the leaves of this plant yield a 100% natural oil which is an antiseptic, a fungicide and a mild solvent.

Tea Tree Oil Origin

The indigenous Bundjalung people of eastern Australia use "tea trees" as a traditional medicine by inhaling the oils from the crushed leaves to treat coughs and colds.

Use of the oil itself did not become common practice until researcher Arthur Penfold published the first reports of its antimicrobial activity in the 1920s.

Tea tree oil was rated as 11 times more active than phenol when the antimicrobial activity was evaluated. So the commercial tea tree oil industry was born.

Extracting Tea Tree Oil

In the early days the oil was produced from natural bush stands of Melaleuca alternifolia by hand cutting the plant material then distilling it on the spot in makeshift, mobile, wood-fired bush stills.

Commercial plantations were established in the 1970s which lead to mechanisation and large-scale production of a consistent essential oil product.