Background The use of medicinal plants in curing diseases is an ancient culture still in use in many parts of the world. Many plants have been proven to have precise ethno-pharmacological relevance. On the contrary, many folkloric plants have also been found to possess DNA damaging effects. Hence, assessing the safety profile of medicinal herbs before being approved for use must be undertaken. Main text This review focuses on medicinal plants exerting genotoxicity effect within through in vivo studies on the bone marrow, erythrocyte or other organs on animal models and in vitro studies on bacterial cells or mammalian cell lines such as mammalian lymphocytes, human hepatoma cell line or HepG2, mouse lung fibroblast cell lines or human adenocarcinoma cell lines. This review has found that several medicinal plants possess genotoxic potentials and are not safe to use. The common methodologies several authors have used include the comet assay, micronucleus assay, bacterial reverse mutation assay, Ames test or Salmonella/microsome assay. Conclusion Plants that have been proven to be genotoxic are not reduced to a particular family, while groups including Fabaceae, Asteraceae, Euphorbiaceae, Rosaceae, Lamiaceae and Apocynaceae appear to be frequent. To avoid any mutation in its users, genotoxicity assessment of therapeutic plants appears to be required.