en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_oil

This misclassifies the substance.

Authoritative sources identify balsam of Peru as a resin/balsam, not an essential oil:

• The U.S. FDA’s UNII record lists it under the preferred substance name BALSAM PERU with synonyms including “BALSAM PERU RESIN,” “BALSAM-OF-PERU RESIN,” and “MYROXYLON PEREIRAE RESIN.”
• A PubMed-indexed paper is titled “Sensitivity to Myroxylon pereirae resin (balsam of Peru)” and its abstract states: “The Myroxylon pereirae resin (MP; balsam of Peru) is a natural resin...”
• A PMC article likewise states that “Balsam of Peru is a resin obtained from the bark of the tree Myroxylon balsamum...”

So the article’s wording is incorrect because it calls balsam of Peru itself an essential oil, when the substance is a botanical resin/balsam. Some extracts or distillates derived from it may be used in fragrances, but that does not make balsam of Peru itself an essential oil.

This sentence overstates the safety of essential-oil pesticides.

EPA describes biopesticides as usually less toxic and says they generally affect only the target pest and closely related organisms—not that they are harmless to everything except pests. That distinction matters.

A recent open-access review focused specifically on non-target organisms states that botanical pesticides, including essential-oil-based products, can cause lethal and sublethal effects in non-target organisms. The review explicitly says botanical products are “not inherently safer than synthetic pesticides” and “may also pose risks to various NTOs, particularly insects.” It also summarizes studies reporting adverse effects in pollinators, predators, aquatic organisms, and soil organisms.

So the article’s claim is incorrect because it presents an absolute safety claim (“without harmful effects to anything else other than pests”) that is contradicted by the published ecotoxicology literature.

The neem row in this LD50 table appears to have unit errors.

For oral toxicity, a PubMed-indexed study of neem oil reports: “The 24-h LD50 was established as 14 ml/kg in rats”—that is milliliters per kilogram, not milligrams per kilogram. Other toxicology sources likewise report neem oil oral LD50 in the gram-per-kilogram range, not 14 mg/kg.

For dermal toxicity, the U.S. EPA’s biopesticide decision document for cold-pressed neem oil reports acute dermal LD50 = >2000 mg/kg. That contradicts the table’s “>2 mg/kg”, which is lower by a factor of at least 1000.

So this table row is not a minor rounding issue; it appears to confuse mg/kg with mL/kg and/or g/kg, producing dramatically incorrect toxicity values.