Grades of EO's (long)

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 2/8/01 7:02:51 AM Pacific Standard Time, melody@...

writes:

> The lab will never tell you that the oil is " aromatherapy " or " therapeutic "

> quality of oil and for good reason. No studies have been done to determine

> exactly what components a specific oil needs to contain for it to have

> therapeutic properties. We can theorize all we want that a specific oil

> contains a certain component known to be healing, but without testing we

> don't

> know whether it appears in enough quantity to be healing and we don't know

> how

> the other components of the oil affect the healing properties.

>

> If you want clarification of this or a more detailed explanation, feel free

> to

> e-mail me.

>

>

> Melody, I am responding to the group as a whole to say how much I

> appreciate this explanation. This is very interesting information and

> gives me a better picture of what the GC testing gives us. If you do have

> more information on this subject, I would be very interested in having it

> and you could send it to the group if you feel there is interest or email

> me privately. From what you have said, I think I can conclude that much of

> the grading, testing, etc. is somewhat subjective and much depends upon the

> particular lab and supplier.

Thanks,

Angie

[Guest guest]

<<>testing/certification of essential oils. I do not see a clear explaination

>of the difference between aromatherapy, therapeutic, commercial " grade " .

>>

The term " aromatherapy grade " or " therapeutic grade " is nothing more than a

marketing tactic. There is no national or international body with the power to

set standards or enforce them and for a good reason. As of this writing, very

little research has been done on essential oils in a double blind clinical

setting. Most of the information available to us is anecdotal and, while

valuable, it is not enough to set any type of legal standards. All a company

can guarantee to you is that their oils are 100% pure essential oils and

provide a GC/MS analysis that shows the components of that oil and in what

percentage they appear.

A GC/MS analysis is not a magical test that determines therapeutic values of an

oil. It is a tool used within the industry to see how a particular crop of

oil compares against previous crops. I don't know if I can explain this

clearly enough here but let me try. Let's take spearmint for example....a

grower somewhere at some time picked out a bottle of spearmint oil and said

that their nose and tongue said that this was an excellent crop of spearmint.

The oil was GC'd and this was used as the baseline for determining quality of

oil for following crops. Over the years, this has been refined further so that

the labs doing this type of testing have created a database of results and have

set a range of standards for determining various qualities of an oil based on

nose and tongue....not on any healing properties the oil may have.

To complicate things further, it is not enough to find just any lab to do a

GC/MS test on an oil. They also need to be able to interpret it...not read

it....interpret it. The GC/MS analysis is a comparative analysis. That means

that in order to correctly " interpret " the data that they're reading, they have

to have an extensive data base of previous results of other crops to compare it

against. If they have a limited data base, and they get an oil that doesn't

resemble anything in their database, then they're going to come back with a

determination that the oil " is not a representative sample " of that particular

oil and may say that the oil isn't a pure essential oil when in fact it is.

About 4 years ago I sent off a sample of spearmint oil to a lab for testing.

It came back as " not a representative sample of spearmint oil " . This puzzled

me since I had driven up to St. s, walked through the fields, got a tour of

the distillery and picked up my oil. It looked like spearmint, smelled like

spearmint and tasted like spearmint so I was a bit puzzled as to how (knowing

that the oil was indeed spearmint) the lab could say this. They never did give

me a good explanation so I sent my sample off to two other labs recommended to

me by other industry members. Both labs came back with reports stating that it

was a representative sample and that it was true spearmint oil. I then went

back to the first lab with the results and asked them why their report

contradicted these other two labs. The owner asked if he could have the

results from the other two labs for his database and then explained that he had

nothing like this in his database so he " assumed " that it was not a true oil.

This tells me that at the end of the statement as to whether or not the oil is

a true representation of that particular oil, the lab should add " according to

our database. "

The lab will never tell you that the oil is " aromatherapy " or " therapeutic "

quality of oil and for good reason. No studies have been done to determine

exactly what components a specific oil needs to contain for it to have

therapeutic properties. We can theorize all we want that a specific oil

contains a certain component known to be healing, but without testing we don't

know whether it appears in enough quantity to be healing and we don't know how

the other components of the oil affect the healing properties.

If you want clarification of this or a more detailed explanation, feel free to

e-mail me.

Melody

Rainbow Meadow Inc.™

http://www.rainbowmeadow.com

*New*: Unrefined shea butter