How do I find out if a company I am considering sells adulterated oils?

Paul estimates that “90-95%  of the higher-end oils on the market are adulterated.” He adds that “ten years ago I would have said 99% but now it’s improving a bit” as smaller companies crop up that are dedicated to purity and proper farming and extraction practices. “Most oils are supplied by the essential oils ‘experts’  that have large volumes of oil available.” They may have a 5k acre lavender field, for example, so they’ll get a lot of oil compared to a 5 acre lavender field. Most of the oils are supplied by the “experts,” so there’s not a whole lot of difference between the oils available.

“It comes down to the adulteration factor,” Paul says. Companies will say they sell all-natural therapeutic grade oil, etc., but they’re actually often only 5% pure and 95% synthetic. How is that possible? With the “experts” working on the oils after extraction, they can be passed as 100% pure and unadulterated. Paul points out “there’s a reason France exports more 100% pure lavender oil than they grow every year. Something fishy is going on there. Many companies buy these oils from the experts and then adulterate them further from there.” For example, they might mix oils of different qualities because the resulting oil will still pass the tests for purity.

Then there are farming and extraction issues. “When you have a large farm, you’re going to deal with large farm problems and issues. At harvest time, you only have a certain amount of time—a couple of weeks—to get your harvest in and distilled before it becomes worthless. These large farms do the tricks of the trade to get as much oil out of the plant as quickly as possible.” This often lowers the quality of the oils in ways that aren’t as obvious with the standard tests. In addition, having several distillers doing low pressure, low temperature extraction at the same time is more expensive, so quicker and less ideal extraction methods are usually employed.

Paul says that, in general, it’s best to find a company that uses small locally-operated farms that grow the plants in their native environment, taking the best care of their plants with a hands-on approach and traditional farming, and distill the oils properly with quality in mind (i.e. using an open system with no added pressure and no high temperatures).