Usnea, to use or Not?

I had a request for usnea recently, and for a purpose I had never experienced. I consider usnea to be a fairly innocent ingredient in topical applications, and excellent for some magical applications, but I cock an eye at the suggested internal uses promoted by numerous herb hawkers online. I am sure I have a stash of locally harvested Usnea strigosa in my storage/work room at this very moment, and I have yet to get around to making a salve with it since I have not needed it for that purpose. Years ago, I was warned against consuming it, and I have always obeyed that warning without ever really contesting it. This led me to do some digging and I did indeed find some references to liver toxicity, so it is good that I listened to granny! Even though certain government publications have been exposed as less than perfectly credible, especially in recent times, it is still good to consider certain ramifications in toxicology and far better to err on the side of caution than not in many instances. Primum Non Nocere!
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5739313/
 www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK548493/