The Importance of Quality in Essential Oils

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Adapted from an article in Grade-A-Notes.
Used by permission.

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In a perfect world, if you wanted the many benefits that aromatherapy has to offer, you could just go down to your local health food store and pick something from the selection you'd find there.  But, unfortunately, this is not a perfect world, and not all essential oils are created equal.

In fact, many — if not most — of the essential oils on the market today are what's called "perfume quality" oil.  Usually found at health food stores or through discount mail order suppliers, these so-called essential oils are over-processed, chemical-laden, highly adulterated and de-natured products that, in reality, are little more than cheap perfume made from various odorous plants.  (Actually, some may have never seen a plant … .)

A look inside the essential oil industry

About 98% of the world's essential oils are made for perfume, food flavoring or industrial purposes, and contain few — if any — of the beneficial therapeutic qualities of pure essential oils.  Of course, consumers are not commonly given this information by the purveyors of these oils.  In fact, the purveyors may have no idea themselves what they are selling.  And unfortunately, it is only when you get the oil home and use it that you find out that it's completely devoid of therapeutic benefits.

The difficulty in finding quality essential oils

Why is this?  Because pure, unadulterated therapeutic-grade essential oils are extremely difficult to come by, and often quite expensive.  One reason for this is that it can take as many as 500 to 5,000 pounds or more of raw plant material to produce just a single pound of pure essential oil.  And that pound of oil can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $15,000, depending upon the amount of raw plant material needed to extract it and the difficulty involved. 

As a result (and to cater to a market that is more interested in cheap oils than quality), many bulk distributors today find ways to avoid all of this trouble.  They sell large quantities of inexpensive, diluted and adulterated oils to unsuspecting (and often untrained) buyers.  These buyers may be told they are getting decent oil, but they are generally getting denatured products with no therapeutic value and, as often as not, are toxic to use.  These oils are then re-bottled and sold in smaller quantities to the public at steep mark-ups.

For this reason, having documentation of the purity and quality of an essential oil is very important.  Without it, you may have a nice smell, but little else.  The gold standard for oil quality is AFNOR.

Factor affecting the quality of an essential oil

It's also important to know that the purity and therapeutic quality of essential oils are dramatically affected by several other very important factors.  These include:

• The location and climate in which the plants are grown,
• The growing procedures used for each particular plant, and
• The harvesting and the extraction procedures used.

The plants sources for pure, therapeutic quality essential oils must be grown organically, whenever possible, nourished with the best plant foods and water, in the right location and at precisely the right climate.  Many of them have to be harvested by hand to avoid damaging the plant or its delicate oils.  Furthermore, the harvesting must be done at precisely the right time, when the oils in the plant are at peak potency.  This means not only the right time of the year, but the right time of day. 

And, true therapeutic-quality essential oils must be extracted by steam distillation, using extremely low pressure and low heat, so as not to degrade the quality of the oil.  (Of course, there are a few exceptions, where distillation is not possible.  Oils, such as jasmine require a different process, which is outside the scope of this article.)  Unfortunately, however, most oil producers use high heat and chemical extraction processes that rob the oils of the vast majority of their value in aromatherapy.  This is done because their first concern is price, not quality.

The importance of doing things right

But these things are not optional!  They are mandatory if a plant oil is to be sold as a pure, therapeutic-grade essential oil.  Nevertheless, it appears that there is only one major producer of essential oils in the United States whose products are all guaranteed to meet these criteria.