I live in a relatively rural area and don’t have many convenient options unless I order online. I’ve resisted doing that to date because of the shipping costs for the smallish quantities I’m using. Having larger quantities of oils sitting around my house doesn’t seem like a good strategy either. Although expiration dates can be misleading, I don’t buy oils locally unless the expiration dates are at least a year out. Of the two spots of DOS I’ve seen in soap I haven’t given away, both seem to be linked to a factor other than the oil itself. That’s two spots of DOS out of hundreds of bars of soap I have sitting around my house, including at least 100 that are over 3 months old. One of the DOS spots is in a high SF soap that has a suspicious dot of something red in the middle of the DOS spot (no red anything used in the soap) and one is where I tried to stamp a hemp soap end piece with a piece of silver jewelry as a test. The other soap that I still have from those batches is fine to date.
So far for me I would say DOS is a rare occurrence, but to be ultra safe, I started using ROE about a month ago. I have been contemplating using citric acid or EDTA for extra protection over the longer term. Member DeeAnna has information about using these additives on her Soapy Stuff website, here.
