Aromatherapy and Essential Oils

Every industry, during its course of development, establishes its own set of ethics according to the nature, purpose and needs of the particular industry. Good manufacturing practices, business practices, consumer information and education rather than misinformation are core needs of every industry.

The Challenge

For aromatherapy, being a relatively young industry, there are several challenges in establishing a set of ethics which I would like to describe in the following.

1. Probably the greatest challenge exists in the fact that the product we are dealing with, essential oils, is industry-wise assigned to “fragrance.” Most likely more than 95% of all essential oils produced worldwide are produced for the flavor, fragrance and toiletry industry. This industry is not concerned with healing, it has not a particular concept of wholeness and it has no explicit preference for a natural product over a synthetic. Naturally, (or unnaturally?) this industry has completely different needs regarding their raw materials than the aromatherapy industry. When I recently had to sent a shipment of 2 kg neroli oil back to the vendor in Egypt, my shipping and receiving person asked me: ”Isn’t that plain fraud, what they are doing?” In a certain way it is. But when we look at this particular case, it tels us how this industry works. We found that this neroli oil contained 6% linalyl acetate, out of which 4% came from the plant and 2% from a synthetic source. (even quantities of less than 1% synthetic linalyl acetate can easily be detected with chiral column analysis). However, the profit margins of neroli oil, which costs several thousand $$ per kg, are not significantly increased by adding just 2% synthetic linalyl acetate. When discussing the issue with the producer, it turned out that they describe their neroli oil on the spec. sheet with 5 – 15% linalyl acetate. This is the normal range for linalyl acetate in neroli oil and this is what the perfumer expects when he works with it. The particular batch had only 4%, therefore some synthetic, so called nature identical material was added. If it would have been done to increase profits, the vendor easily could have added 10%.

2. The aromatherapy industry is a fairly young industry in this country, but at the same it is growing with an enormous pace. We cannot expected our aromatherapists within weeks and months to have the knowledge of the ancient Egyptian adept or the Indian Vaidja who had a body of knowledge at their disposal accumulated and care for by many generations of healers. We are in the process of reestablishing an ancient healing art and at the same time we make the attempt to built the bridge to modern western botany, anatomy, physiology and biochemistry. This process necessarily takes time and requires patience from everyone being involved.

3. With the enormous growth rate of AT, a large scale commercialization of the industry was unavoidable. When there is a perceived need of a product the laws of the market demand that this need is being filled, whether the suppliers have the background, experience, resources and competence to fill the need or not. There is certainly a group of committed suppliers who ongoingly improve their resources and competence to do justice to the demand of a true aromatherapy product and I see these suppliers progressively succeeding in their efforts. But if an industry grows as fast as AT does, it is to me a necessary part of the phenomenon that we see for example a company selling very successfully even to health food stores a line of 30 purely synthetic perfume oils, advertised as the purest aromatherapy products, the promotional material pointing to a web page with aromatherapy certification course etc. etc. etc. Again, it will take time for things to sort out.

4. The aromatherapy industry is highly diversified. AT today spans from medicinal internal use of essential oils to room fragrancing, massage therapy, and many other forms of holistic healing while its largest commercial significance at the moment lies in the personal care industry. The boundaries between a medicinal product and scented personal care product are not clearly defined. The standard of ethics is almost necessarily different with different approaches.

5. There is no legislation or other regulation of what a natural essential oil has to be. Such regulation probably would not be very desirable since neither the Food and Drug Administration nor any other governmental institution subscribes to a holistic paradigm and therefore does not have the prerequisites to formulate such regulation. NAHA’s attempt of self-regulation, as difficult as it appears in the face of these challenges , is therefor the most promising approach.