So, wormwood contains thujone – absinthe contains wormwood – absinthe must be poison, right?
credence by much old and some modern research on Thujone. The problem is, absinthe is not Thujone, and contrary to the assumptions of researchers both long-dead and alive and kicking, very little Thujone actually seems to find its way into absinthe. Early researchers generally used wormwood oil, which isn’t the same as absinthe and is only present in absinthe in tiny quantities. More recent researchers have tended to assume that Thujone was present in high quantities in vintage absinthes. This turns out though, to be incorrect. It’s only in the last few years that accurate testing for Thujone has become widely commercially available (the analytic method is painstaking and expensive to perform and easily results in false positives and errors). When vintage absinthes, and modern absinthes made scrupulously according to historical protocols, were first tested for Thujone, they showed, contrary to all expectations, extremely low levels of Thujone, well within the 10mg/l norm allowed by EU
