If I have extracted a plant with ethyl acetate and found that this extract has an effective activity, is it generally safe for humans to ingest this extracted plant material? Ethyl acetate is GRAS and would be evaporated away, so only trace amounts should remain in the extract.
Ethyl acetate is highly flammable, as well as toxic when ingestion or inhaled, and this chemical can be seriously damaging to internal organs in the case of repeated or prolonged exposure. Ethyl acetate can also cause irritation when it comes into contact with the eyes or skin.
Hello, Sasha Nealand
The safety information about ethyl acetate (Et-Ac) can be found from MSDS (attached).
You can remove the traces of Et-Ac by ethanol wash for 2-3 times. Ethanol may facilitate two advantages here-
(1) It's miscibility with ethyl acetate will lead to effective removal of Et-Ac, and
(2) It is edible (up to a certain percentage) and also used in several drug formulations (universally used in Homeopathic formulations & liquid pharmaceuticals).
Warning: Don't use ABSOLUTE ETHANOL in final preparation for ingestion. The final preparation should contain a lower percentage of ethanol(aq).
Finally, perform a toxicity test in animals before human consumption.
Yes it is safe but you should first dry the extract completely by vaccume or or any other drying method
In order to answer this question scientifically, you need to extend an additional experiment to test the cellular toxicity of the dried plant extract.
Plant material extracted with ethyl acetate can not safely ingested because of solvent toxicity. Hence, remove the solvent and use water extract or calculated quantity of dilute ethanol.
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