Questions to Ask Your Essential Oil Company

Everyone will tell you quality matters. Every company will tell you their product is safe and of high quality. So how can you tell for sure if it's a company you can trust.

Call them. And when you do ask the following questions Dr. David Stewart, Author of many books including The Chemistry of Essential Oils Made Easy and Healing Oils of the Bible. He's also the founder of CARE -- Center for Aromatherapy Research and Education.

12 Questions to ask your essential oil company  (list created by Dr. David Stewart)

1. Does their company own any farms on which to raise herbs for oils? And if they do, are they new farms on land formerly polluted with herbicides, pesticides, and chemicals that contain residuals from the past, or are they farming land that is clean, which has never been cultivated or has been untilled for at least the last 50 years?

2. Does their company have their own fully equipped testing laboratory to verify an oil’s composition?

3. Do they have anyone on staff with a trained nose who can analyze oils by their smell? (There are less than 200 people in the world with noses sufficiently trained to discern the chemistry of a fragrance.)

4. If their company purchases oils from outside suppliers, do they visit the distilleries and farms of those suppliers periodically to observe if the herbs are grown organically, i.e. without pesticides, herbicides, or chemical fertilizers?

5. Do they know if the grower has a testing laboratory on the farm to determine when the crop is at its peak for oil harvesting?

6. Do they know if the crops were actually harvested at their peak time and, if so, was there an inordinant delay in taking them to the still and into the cookers?

7. Do they know if their distillery personnel understand the art and science of distilling, exactly how to pack the cookers, how to administer the steam, how to maintain minimum temperatures and pressures throughout the cooker, and how to continuously monitor the process throughout distillation to make sure the oil produced contains all of its components in the proper proportions?

8. If their supplier makes a mistake in the distillation or harvesting processes that results in an inferior grade of oil, does that supplier sell the oil anyway or do they discard it?

9. Do they know if the cookers in the distilleries of their suppliers have domed lids or cone-shaped lids? Most stills use dome-shaped lids. Cone topped cookers deliver a better grade of oil than dome tops.

10. Do they know if their suppliers supplement the distillation process with solvents to extract additional oil from the plant matter?

11. Do they know if their suppliers bottle their oils directly from the distillery without modifying the composition of the natural oil by adding anything or taking anything away?

12. Do they know if their company has tested their company’s oils side by side with other vendors’ oils in the same lab to make a fair comparison? And if so, where is the data?

___________________

When you are ready to choose high quality essential oils, please give me a call and I’ll help get started, knowing that you’re have chosen essential oils your can trust.