Clove Oil vs Benzocaine: One Trial and Two Sets of Risks
Our verdict first: "clove oil or benzocaine" is a choice between two products, neither of which addresses what is wrong with a sore tooth, and both carry documented risks. We sell clove bud and clove leaf oils for aroma and cosmetic use, we do not sell benzocaine or any dental product, and we will not tell you how to put clove oil in your mouth. Here is what the one head-to-head trial found, what regulators have said about benzocaine, and what is known about the clove side.
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Shop Now →The only head-to-head trial, read closely
The study everyone cites is Alqareer, Alyahya and Andersson, Journal of Dentistry, 2006, from Kuwait University. It enrolled 73 adult volunteers. Four preparations were applied to the mucosa above the upper canine for five minutes: a homemade clove gel, a 20% benzocaine gel, and a look-alike placebo for each. Each volunteer then received two needle sticks and rated the pain on a 100 mm line. Both active gels scored significantly lower than placebo (p = 0.005), and clove and benzocaine did not differ significantly. The authors concluded clove gel "may have the potential" to replace benzocaine before needle insertion.
Four details limit what you can take from that:
- The clove concentration was not stated. It was a homemade gel. Nobody can reproduce it, and you cannot translate it into a dilution of any bottle.
- It measured needle-stick pain on healthy cheek-side tissue in adults, not a toothache, a sore gum, or a child.
- "No significant difference" is not "equal". With 73 people, a trial can miss a moderate difference.
- It is one trial. The PubMed record does not state funding.
Later trials in children exist, such as a 2026 randomized study of clove oil, EMLA 5% and lignocaine 2% gel in children aged 7 to 10 before a dental anesthetic injection, where all three scored lower pain and no group differed significantly. We cite it only as a record that this question keeps being tested in dental settings, under a dentist's control, with the product made for the purpose. Reasoning from that: the trials that exist test a measured gel applied by a clinician, not a home-made mixture from a bottle of essential oil.
What FDA says about the benzocaine side
The FDA's consumer update on teething pain in infants and children names benzocaine as the active ingredient in several nonprescription oral products and says they should not be used for teething pain in children "because they can be dangerous". It states that benzocaine can lead to methemoglobinemia, "a serious, and sometimes fatal, condition" in which red blood cells carry less oxygen, and that FDA has received reports of deaths and serious injuries in infants and children. The same page names homeopathic teething tablets, amber teething necklaces and prescription viscous lidocaine as other things to avoid for teething, and recommends a clean finger rubbing the gums or a firm, unfrozen rubber teether.
The page does not give case counts, so we do not either. What it does establish is that the warning is about teething in young children. It would be a mistake to assume the "natural" side is exempt from that kind of risk. Absence of an FDA warning on clove oil is not evidence that clove oil is safe in a baby's mouth; it means the question is outside what the drug-safety communication covers. We cover the baby question separately in our teething article.
What is documented on the clove side
- Burns. Sulaksana and Soegyanto (2022) reported a 30-year-old woman who applied a clove oil concentrate to mouth ulcers and was found to have shallow ulcers with redness across the cheek lining, soft palate and tongue, recorded as an oral mucosal burn.
- Skin irritation and allergy. The Tisserand Institute gives a topical maximum of 0.5% for clove bud oil and says eugenol can be an irritant or allergen if not used in proper dilutions. Our published GC-MS report for the bud oil lists 73.57% eugenol, so 0.5% of that oil is roughly 0.37% eugenol.
- Swallowing. Janes et al. (2005) reported fulminant liver failure in a 15-month-old after 10 ml of clove oil, with ALT above 13,000 U/L at 24 hours.
Side by side
| Question | Benzocaine gel | Clove preparations |
|---|---|---|
| Human trial evidence found | 20% gel as the comparator in the 2006 trial: lower needle-stick pain than placebo | Homemade gel of unstated strength: lower needle-stick pain than placebo, in the same trial |
| Main documented danger | Methemoglobinemia (FDA), the reason for the teething warning | Mucosal burns, skin sensitization, liver injury if swallowed |
| Does it address the cause of a toothache? | No | No |
| What you would be buying | A labelled over-the-counter drug product | Our oils are labelled aromatic and cosmetic, not for the mouth |
Why a concentration matters, with numbers
The trial's benzocaine arm was a 20% gel, which is 200 mg of drug per gram. Our bud oil's published GC-MS report lists 73.57% eugenol, which is about 736 mg of eugenol per gram of undiluted oil. Those two numbers cannot be compared as strengths, because they are different molecules with different potencies, but they show why "a homemade clove gel" is not a unit of anything: the undiluted oil carries nearly four times the weight fraction of its main compound that the benzocaine gel carries of benzocaine, and the trial does not say what fraction the clove gel had. A reader who tries to copy it is guessing at a number the paper never gave, on tissue that burns (see above).
Who should skip clove for this entirely
Anyone looking for something for a child (see the FDA update above and a pediatrician or pediatric dentist), anyone who is pregnant (ask an OB-GYN or midwife), anyone with a known clove or eugenol reaction, and anyone with open sores or ulcers in the mouth, which is where the documented burn happened. Our product pages also say to keep the oils away from children and pets.
The point both sides skip
Neither product addresses why the tooth hurts. Pain that sends someone to a gel or a bottle is commonly a cavity, a cracked tooth, an infection or a gum problem, and each of those has a dentist's answer. Numbing a symptom while the cause advances is the real trade-off. If the tooth hurts, the next step is a dental appointment, and a pharmacist can tell you which over-the-counter products are appropriate for your age and medicines. Our toothache article and the essential oil roundup go through what dentists use and why.
Where our oils fit
If what you want from clove is the smell, that is what we sell it for: diffusing, diluted use on skin per our 0.5% to 2% guidance (with the caveat that the Tisserand figure for bud oil is 0.5%), soap, candles. If you want a mouth product, that is a dentist or pharmacist conversation, and clove oil from us is the wrong purchase.
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Clove Essential Oil from our own shop, in sizes from 0.5 oz to bulk.
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Shop Now →Sources & Further Reading
- Alqareer A, Alyahya A, Andersson L, 2006. The effect of clove and benzocaine versus placebo as topical anesthetics. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16530911
- Awasthi N et al., 2026. Pain perception after clove oil, EMLA 5% and lignocaine 2% gel in children aged 7 to 10. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42582221
- U.S. FDA. consumer update on teething pain in infants and children. fda.gov consumer updates
- Sulaksana SD, Soegyanto AI, 2022. Oral mucosal burn caused by topical application of a clove oil concentrate. jurnal.unissula.ac.id/18635
- Tisserand Institute. Eugenol: essential oil constituents in food, part 4. tisserandinstitute.org/learn-more/eugenol
- Janes SE, Price CS, Thomas D, 2005. Essential oil poisoning: N-acetylcysteine for eugenol-induced hepatic failure. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15895251