Adulterated Oils & Their Dangers

What You Should Know About Essential Oils

Most people believe that when they buy an oil that is labeled as “100% pure” they are getting a high quality, genuine essential oil. This is far from true most of the time. Not all essential oils are created equal. Unfortunately, one can have an unadulterated essential oil, meaning it doesn’t contain man-made chemicals, solvents or additives and still NOT have a premium-grade oil because of the lack of care or concern given during the cultivation, harvesting and distillation of the plant. Producing a premium-grade essential oils is as much an art as it is a science. It has been reported that companies are allowed to label their oils “100% pure” as long as it contains at least 5% of the “actual oil” alleged to be in the bottle! So that bottle you see at your local grocery or health food store, or even from apothecary shops and essential oil companies labeled “100% pure” means NOTHING!

Adulterated and mislabeled essential oils present dangers

Dr. Kurt Schnaubelt, PhD., world renowned author of several books in the field of aromatherapy estimates that 95% of the essential oils produced in the world are adulterated or reconstituted. This means they are not genuine, authentic essential oils. He states…

“There is endless ingenuity when it comes to adulterating essential oils. Adulterants are not always synthetic, many adulterants are of botanical origin hence natural, yet they still offset the balance of the authentic oil.”

 
This means, at best, they may be only partially natural and have lesser quality oils or chemicals mixed in, or worse, they may be totally man-made synthetic versions of the real thing. In either case, it affects the balance or action of the resulting oil in a negative way. Oils produced in this manner not considered genuine, authentic essential oils and are much more prone to produce an allergic reaction, irritation, and/or undesirable or toxic side effects.

Most of the oils on the market are manufactured for the perfume industry with no thought given to preserving any of the beneficial chemical compounds. They are distilled at the same temperature, at the same pressure, and for the same amount of time. They are considered “perfume”, or “aromatherapy” quality, or “fourth & fifth quality” oils and are NOT meant to be used internally, and sometimes not even topically! Don’t believe me… check the label on your bottle of essential oil or the next time you’re at a store selling essential oils, check to see if somewhere on the label it states “DO NOT INGEST”, or “DO NOT APPLY TOPICALLY”. I took these pictures at our local grocery store to show you some of the signs and labels for the essential oils being sold there.

Most so-called “lavender” oil sold in stores, health food stores and by competitors (ah hem, I mean immitators) turn out to be lavandin, a hybrid lavender that is chemically very different from lavender (lavandula angustifolia). Lavandin contains high levels of camphor (12 to 18%) and will burn the skin. In contrast, true lavender contains virtually no camphor and has many benefits.

Much of the worlds supply of so-called lavender oil is grown in China, Russia, France and Tasmania. They bring it into France, cut it with synthetic linolyl acetate to improve the fragrance, add propylene glycol or SD 40, DEP, and DOP, which are solvents that have no smell and increase the volume, and then sell it to unsuspecting consumers in the U.S. as lavender oil.

In France, production of true lavender oil dropped from 87 tons in 1967 to only 12 tons in 1998. During this same time, the demand for lavender oil had grown over 100 times. So where did essential oil marketers obtain enough lavender to meet the demand? They used a combination of synthetic and adulterated oils.

“Most of the lavender oil sold in America today is lavendin, which is a hybrid and is grown and distilled in either China or Russia. The oil production in both locations tests high in radioactive isotopes. They bring it into France, cut it with synthetic linolol acetate to improve the fragrance, add propylene glycol or SD 40, which is a solvent that has no smell ‘and increases the volume, and then sell it in the United States as lavender oil. We in America don’t know the difference and are happy to buy and sell it for $5-7 per half ounce in health food stores, beauty salons, grocery and department stores and through mail order.”- D. Gary Young

 
Frankincense is another example of an adulterated oil. The frankincense resin that is sold in Somalia costs between $30,000 and $35,000 per ton. The essential oil requires 12 hours to be steam distilled from the resin and is very expensive. Frankincense oil that sells for $25.00 per ounce or less is invariably distilled with alcohol or other solvents.

Adulterated oils that are cut with synthetic extenders can be very detrimental, sometimes causing rashes and burning, skin irritations and more; and therefore warnings against their topical application or oral ingestion are stated on the bottle. Petrochemical solvents can all cause allergic reactions, besides being devoid of any beneficial effects. When these cut, synthetic and adulterated oils cause rashes, burns or other irritations, we wonder why we don’t get the benefit we were expecting and conclude that essential oils don’t have much value.
 

Detecting Essential Oil Adulteration

It seems like companies are popping up all over the place these days, always comparing themselves to Young Living, saying that their oils are just as good. Nothing could be further from the truth! We have the most stringent, the most rigorous standards of the industry and have set the standard that everyone else is trying to reach. NO other essential oil company does all that Young Living Essential Oils does to produce the highest quality essential oils, growing from seed, harvesting, distilling, producing, formulating, packaging, and marketing authentic, premium-grade essential oils. It’s called our SEED-TO-SEAL process.

Young Living conducts multiple tests on each and every batch of essential oils and works very closely with Dr. Herve Casabianca, PhD (shown on right). He is very highly respected and is known as the leading botanical chemist in the essential oil world. Dr. Casabianca, who works for CNRS, a government laboratory located in France conducts essential oil GC-MS analysis. GC-MS testing uses gas chromatography and pairs it with mass spectroscopy testing. This type of analysis requires years of training and experience… basically a Masters degree and there are very few people in the world qualified enough to do this type of analysis. He also works with Young Living to correctly identify the essential oils being tested to make sure that they are sourced from the right species and are not adulterated after they are distilled which is just one of the steps in our Seed-to-Seal process that assures we have the highest quality essential oils in the world.

The following paper was published in the Journal of Environmental Analytical Chemistry explaining the problem of, and the process of how to correctly detect, adulterated essential oils. It is a review of 30 studies dating up to May 2014 that detail the analytical procedures used to uncover
essential oil adulteration in order to ensure that essential oils are authentic and genuine.

“Summary
In summation, illegal essential oil adulteration and contamination scandals now require sophisticated and highly technical methods to authenticate the oils. Analytical chemistry must be employed in all its forms to thwart the escalating, economic adulteration of these valued therapeutic agents.”

 

 

Young Living is the Cream of the Crop

Our Farms and distilling processes are a MAJOR factor in placing Young Living Essential Oils head and shoulders above the rest and sets us apart from the competition. No matter what other companies claim, please DO NOT confuse those oils with Young Living’s SEED TO SEAL® premium-grade essential oils essential oils until you’ve looked into the cold, hard facts. Unless a company is taking every single one of these steps there is absolutely NO WAY that their oils can compare!

At Young Living, each oil is distilled using guidelines that are specific to that particular oil, in order to maintain all of the beneficial qualities. Before harvesting the plant material for distillation, it is tested in the field, on an hourly basis, in order to determine when the the chemical constituents are at peak levels. Then, using low temperature and low pressure steam distillation, each essential oil is carefully distilled in a cone shaped, stainless steel distiller and distilled for a specific amount of time, at a specific amount of pressure, and at a specific temperature, so as not to defile the quality of the oil. The entire Seed-to-Seal process assures that great love and care is taken every step along the way.

Young Living takes great care every step of the way in their Seed-to-Seal process to make sure that they are producing essential oils that are the cream of the crop in the essential oil industry, making them the best, highest potency oils in the world.

• Seeds- not from hybrids
• Must have clarity of definition (one plant could have 200 species.)
• Soil- Young Living farms on land that has not been polluted with herbicides, pesticides, and chemicals for at least 50 years.
• Chemicals are never used on the plants in the field
• Steam distillation of each plant uses low pressure & low temperature, in upright patented cone shaped containers & no chemicals are ever used in the process
• The time in the distiller is also important- cypress oil needs to be distilled for 24 hours
• Many companies will distill at higher temperature for a shorter time. This will destroy the quality of the oil.
• The distiller must be no more than 50 miles away from the site where the plants were harvested.

NEW TO ESSENTIAL OILS? Discover the Young Living difference here!