In the United States, there are virtually no enforced standards when it comes to claims about the quality of essential oil products. As a result of these lax standards, U.S. oil manufacturers or distributors can label their products as “100% Pure” or “therapeutic grade” without any regard to the quality or type of essential oil used. This has allowed manufacturers to sell lower quality and less expensive essential oils in a wide variety of unregulated combinations. This presents a great deal of risk to people seeking quality essential oils to benefit their health and wellness.
Terms often found on essential oil labels that do nothing to guarantee the oil’s suitability or safety for medicinal uses include “ISO certified”, AFNOR certified” and “Aromatherapy grade”. Unbelievably, essential oils that say “pure” or “100% pure” are allowed to have as little as 51% essential oil by law. So the word “pure” on the label doesn’t really mean pure. Even if an oil is undiluted, it may still be adulterated with synthetic chemicals, residual pesticides and with solvents, or it may be a truly pure oil but of the wrong medicinal quality.
What does “high quality” really mean?
A “quality essential oil” can mean different things, depending on how you intend to use the oil. To a perfume formulator, geranium essential oil spiked with artificial chemicals to enhance the fragrance might be considered “high quality”. To a massage therapist, lavender oil diluted in a soothing base might be considered a high quality oil. To a doctor treating bacterial infections, only a truly pure, medicinal strength, wild crafted oregano oil that is high in natural carvacrol content would be considered a quality essential oil.
Breaking the mold of pharmaceutical medicine.
Medicinal plants have hundreds, and in many cases thousands, of active, inactive and unknown chemical components, called constituents. This complex mix of natural chemical ingredients can work together in subtle ways, often achieving results that none of the individual components could by themselves. This complexity also helps natural remedies to work in a multidimensional way, doing many things at once inside the body. This is especially true of essential oils. Like a key fits perfectly into a lock, the complexity of essential oils is keyed to work inside your body in a safe, balanced and multidimensional way.
In contrast, many pharmaceutical drugs are made by isolating a single chemical component from a plant, or making that component artificially in a lab. That component is usually chosen because it has a specific desirable property, such as the ability to lower blood pressure. That single constituent is stripped away from the plant, concentrated, then made into a drug product.
While drugs are often very potent and provide specific desired effects, they also lack the complex lock and key benefits that a natural product has. They also lack the multidimensional benefits of a natural product, along with the balance that makes them safe. The end result is a drug with one desirable effect but many negative side effects.
Unfortunately, most essential oils are made in the same way of thinking as drugs. Oil “quality” is measured by how much of one or two main ingredients are in the oil. Instead of considering quality as a whole, the focus is on a few ingredients that are considered “active” or most important. And quite often, the “quality” of an oil is “increased” by artificially adding those ingredients in unnatural amounts, or from synthetic sources.
Many aromatherapists, oil companies and essential oil users have bought into the same way of thinking as the drug companies. Focusing on the part rather than the whole. The best way to preserve the safety and medicinal strength of an essential oil is to retain the “lock and key” complexity that nature intended. That means looking at quality and purity in a new way, and it’s the key to finding truly therapeutic and medicine essential oils.
A better way to measure essential oil quality
When medicinal use is the objective, then an essential oil’s quality should be based on how closely the oil matches what natural intended. From the soil to the oil, every step in the growing, cultivation, distilling and formulating process should be focused on making the most potent, effective and safe oil for medicinal uses. With this in mind, the following criteria should be used to measure a medicinal essential oil’s quality:
> Correct plant species. Many essential oils with the same name can come from different plant species. Often times, the most commonly used species used by essential oil companies is not the best species for medicinal or therapeutic uses. Important examples are eucalyptus, lavender and oregano.
> Correct subspecies, chemotype and part of the plant. The bark, roots, leaves and branches of the same plant species can produce very different types of essential oils. Subspecies and different varieties of the same species can also have a huge impact on the essential oil properties.
Optimal soil, growing and harvesting to maximize therapeutic properties. The climate, altitude, cultivation method and especially the soil condition and health have a huge impact on the properties of an essential oil, especially the concentration of key therapeutic ingredients.
Extraction method to preserve maximum medicinal potency. The extraction method used to distill an essential oil can make or break the medicinal quality of the oil. Often the best extraction method to preserve medicinal properties takes extra time and is less efficient than high volume methods.
> Free from adulterating additives, pesticides and artificial ingredients. If medicinal potency and safety is the objective, then unnatural additives have no place. This includes all the commonly used adulterating substances to make the growing or processing of an essential oil more “efficient” or cost-effective, or to artificially inflate the active ingredients of an oil.
> Truly pure formulating. Many otherwise high-quality essential oil products are diluted in neutral carrier oils. The words “in a base of…” on the label are a sure giveaway the oil has been diluted. While diluting oils can have benefits for some specific uses, it reduces the number of ways the oil can be used, especially therapeutically. It also reduces the shelf life.
> Proper testing, documentation and acceptance criteria to ensure quality. Each batch of essential oil should be traceable back to the grower, distiller, broker/importer and final formulator. Third-party testing should be used in combination with strict criteria for acceptance or rejection of each batch of oil. These measures are the only way to ensure that all criteria to produce the best therapeutic grade essential oil have been achieved.
What’s the best brand of therapeutic essential oils?
There are many quality standards used to gauge the quality of essential oils. However, most of these standards pertain to other uses besides medicinal and therapeutic use. The E.O.B.B.D. quality standard comes the closest to meeting all of the criteria for making high-quality therapeutic grade essential oils. E.O.B.B.D. stands for Essential Oil Botanically and Biochemically Defined. This quality standard includes the tracing of each oil lot, botanical description, physical characteristics, extraction mode, soil composition, and full physical and chemical analyses.
When combined with knowledgeable supplier selection and formulating, the E.O.B.B.D. standard can produce the highest quality medicinal grade oils available. For Michelle’s recommended brand of essential oils, click here.