Jan Kuśmirek

Be careful about what you wish for

The recent history of aromatherapy in the 21^st century has highlighted the difference between those set on an orthodox medical approach to therapy and those who relate more to complementary or alternative approaches. Much relates to essential oils and our understanding or beliefs about how they work within the body system.

I have always lamented that within aromatherapy, the power of smell has never been given the credence or the value that a smell has. Education about the olfactory system is quite limited for most students being quickly assessed as molecules passing through and affecting the hormone system before passing to the limbic area and imagination and dream.

The oral route, and I include inhalation in this approach via transmission across the lungs, gets more attention. Some therapists are for oral ingestion others against. Much of this argument revolves around the claims that are made. Medical claims are not allowed for essential oils sold over the counter to consumers and is disallowed by practioner organisations. I think that for the consumer a pill is seen as medical even if it is not the same applies to a teaspoon of something! This can be seen in the supplement industry for despite what any legislation may say a supplement is taken by consumers for health benefit an example would be glucosamine taken ‘against’ arthritis.

Safety has always been a concern when taking essential oils by mouth or by ingestion. Multi-level sellers have contributed greatly to misunderstandings about the safety, use and efficacy of essential oils. This is not necessarily the fault of the originating company but rather of the exaggerated claims by individual seller to meet targets and grow personal benefit and income. Sometimes this sales route produces almost evangelical beliefs that surpass reality.

At the time of writing, I have letter from a potential Fragrant Earth customer enquiring about whether their oils are suitable to replace a multi-level brand. The reason for her enquiry concerns her self-treatment of a cancer she is suffering from. Now for whatever reason or source she has gotten hold of some ideas that naturally offer hope, but the problem is that there is no management of the outcome by the seller which is my main objection. A sale has been made but such a disease, presumably already under some ‘normal’ treatment needs management or cooperation with other clinicians.

Turning briefly back to the supplement industry I have noticed an increasing number of French aromatherapy brands now offering gelules, syrups and bonbons containing or laced with essential oils for various named purposes. Certainly, I have benefited from some very good, sugar free soothing lozenges, propolis and eucalyptus, a great combination. Sometimes adventurous copy overcomes local registration problems for I am looking at a catalogue as I write from Belgium selling ‘sweets to suck when winter arrives’, the flavourings of course essential oils!

If one looks at the national official pharmacopeia’s from the 1930’s, which is not so long ago, although to generation Z it probably sounds like the Dark Ages, many essential oils are featured. These were the days before modern synthetic antibiotics so essential oils were a great first line of defence against infectious disease.  In the UK many branded products continue to promote and sell herbal essences, tinctures syrups using essential oils as actives.  These are registered medicines or licensed medicines.

How this came about is aptly described by the British Herbal Medical Association who write “From the early 1970s a herbal medicine making a medicinal claim on the label required a Product Licence. Acceptable products already on the market were granted Product Licences of Right (PLRs) with minimum formality at the time, but thereby became subject to general regulatory requirements for medicines including, for example, the premises in which they could be manufactured. The European Community Review of Medicines during the 1980s required such products to be reviewed for quality, safety and efficacy by 1990. Those that satisfied the requirements were granted a Product Licence (i.e. a full Marketing Authorisation) and can be identified by a “PL” number on the product pack. For the majority, the available evidence of efficacy was based more on human experience than formal clinical studies and therefore indications had to commence with the words “A traditional herbal remedy for……”

 This has of course, which is typical of the European regulatory scenario, stopped the development of new and effective plant based medicines. Remedies based upon further traditional use particularly from aromatherapy have generally been unable gain traction in the medical context. Why so? To obtain a license now requires the same level of cost and requirements including trials as the pharmaceutical industry. This cost is prohibitive as it was designed to be. Big Pharma, as it is known, is the most powerful lobby worldwide alongside the arms industry. Jealous of its reputation and with outstanding successes in the medicines field it is understandable that the drug industry is not going to give way to witches, herbalists and folk tradition even if the remedies are demonstrated to be successful.

Those companies that were in the herbal business at the time of the regulatory changes and who obtained their product licenses by right were lucky. Aromatherapy was not yet established enough to come into that category. The number of essential oil suppliers as compared to today was very small and the emphasis was not on product but rather establishing the legal right to practice as a therapist. Practice took precedence over product.

The common law of England hold that patients have the right to exercise autonomy over their own bodies and over the treatment they undergo. This does not come from the European Convention on Human Rights but is a common law right. Common law is a system of law based on custom, tradition, and court decisions rather than on written legislation. One could say it is part of the tradition of being a free willed human. It is clearly the right of humans to take advantage of the health and life benefits of the hedgerow and wild fields. Unfortunately, legislation often dressed up in favour of safety has limited this right as seen  in the many patented medicines based or drawn from nature.

The 1970’s and 80’s were a great time for legislators and new regulations for medicine and cosmetics grew like Topsy. It was into the latter category that aromatherapy sought shelter. Coincidentally the Spa industry came out from its image of cold water and exercise into the more leisure spas of today. Spas in some European countries had a special medical role or status and so in this area treatment became blurred and aromatherapy ‘British’ style with massage grew increasingly popular. The question remained as to whether aromatherapy was a ’proper’ treatment.  

There were two highly influential schools in England that kick started aromatherapy leading to its worldwide popularity. These were the London School of Aromatherapy and the Shirley Price School of Aromatherapy. Both had distance learning programmes and spawned eventually rival or associated schools in different countries but notably the USA and Japan. Europe was retarded from this growth by opposition from perfume companies. They were scared of aromatherpie as practiced in France which is part of orthodox trained  medicine, often with oral prescription, compromising their market. Individuals who used aromatherapy, even ‘British’ style were fearful of prosecution as non-licensed practitioners of medicine.

There were two available solutions. The first was to seek shelter under cosmetic legislation as distinct from perfumery. Today essential oils are very prevalent in skincare and toiletry products. Essential oils as actives are seen especially in the smaller independent brands which, much to the annoyance of major brands, almost seem to operate ‘under the radar’ with unsubstantiated claims. Oddly despite wanting to be seen as distinct from perfumery, blends with various claims in label copy, hide on the ingredient list using the term parfum. Strictly speaking the only use of this term should be applied to fragrance and certainly noy in suppor5tof other claims. C’est la vie for the present.

The other solution had to prioritise the therapy itself. It was necessary to establish standards of training and practice acceptable to government institutions for education and practice as well as independent exam bodies. Two primary aromatherapy practitioner organisations were formed each one biased to one of the original schools. These two were the International Federation of Aromatherapists (IFA) and the International Society of Professional Aromatherapists (ISPA) the SP part was always referenced to Shirley Price by the less commercial IFA membership! All thanks must be given to a band of hard-working volunteers at the time who helped establish what is now the worldwide aromatherapy phenomenon. of today. Few have been given the accolade they deserved being side-lined by the more commercially minded writers and producers.

With numerous amalgamations aromatherapy today is organised internationally but the old age split as to what it is; beauty, spa, therapy, medicine still exists. Most organisations still oppose oral use for the rather practical reasons mentioned within the article.

There is also some division due to the ambitions for the therapy amongst those with a bias toward the orthodox field or the desire to place science as the basis for the therapy. It seems more status is given to being a doctor or nurse rather than a therapist. If aromatherapy is seen as no more than smelly massage, then one can quite see their point. If a form of aromatic medicine is the goal, then legislation has to be unpicked which is highly unlikely. Equally the materials of aromatherapy would for the same legislative reasons have to be refined and standardised which some would see as a heresy.  

This heresy seen by some can be seen by examining one of the success story of the essential oil industry Tea Trea Oil (TTO). Arthur Penfold in Australia in the 1920’s had made reference to the different chemical constituents that could be found in Eucalypts of the same species growing close to each other. He acknowledged that whatever the constituent, the tree was the same species and had all the same botanical characteristics that its seed had foreordained in leaf, form and function. Whatever could be analysed in chemical terms its life form was a Eucalypt. Those who look beyond chemistry perfectly understand the meaning of this.

Penfold was also really the starting point for the development of the Tea Tree industry, and he promoted its use because he identified that it had antiseptic properties and had a history of traditional use. I do remember when the best tea tree species clones were being developed by Macquarie university that a terpineol4-ol type was identified as the epitome of the desired standard. The standard today sets the maxima and minima for the 14 components of the chemotype “Oil of Melaleuca—terpinen-4-ol type,”. Oddly the standard does not stipulate the species of melaleuca to be used. Some practitioners had a preference for wild sources rather than the standardised form but this is not the general view for legislation intervened.

Consumers today are likely to Google for information about tea tree and one of the first sites co come up will be Wikipedia. This how it is and is unfortunate in a world of information our lazy searching has become so limited.  By reading the entry one could soon be put off using it. The second section is headed Toxicity. There is plenty of data. Numerous traditional uses are mentioned but  “there is little evidence of efficacy” and “there is not enough evidence to support any of these claims due to the limited amount of research conducted on the topic”. My point is that in science which is often little more in academia an endless search for research grants, one should be wary of what one wishes for.

The lesson is, the more aromatherapy is proven to be effective the more restrictions will begin to be applied. This may seem jaundiced but that is the experience of much natural medicine and the evidence is all around you in pharmacies and as explained above. The balance between rights and freedoms has during the Covid period been heavily weighted against freedom. Many essential oils have been used in sanitisers to improve the characteristics of anti-viral and bacterial ethanol and propanol with great success with little publicity, for after all regulatory affairs would not allow such to be marketed without controls.  Nevertheless the financial might of the toiletry industry has elevated citrus essential oils into the same killing category all fully approved. I suppose one must assume that if ethanol does the trick with a bit of water, perfume, colour and gelling agent why bother for the profit margin has been brilliant.

Jan Kusmirek © February 2022

One of the most frequently asked questions in aromatherapy and about essential oils concerns their quality.  All users, domestic or professional, like to think that they use “good quality” essential oils for aromatherapy.  As human beings our natural inclination is to reinforce the value of our purchasing decisions.  Few people would admit to buying poor quality yet, undoubtedly, by our desire to have good quality essential oils for aromatherapy and by using the term ‘good’, we admit that there must be the opposite, bad or poor quality essential oils, which are used for what we may call aromatherapy.  Some examples can be found at the end of this article.

Around the world since the late 1980’s I have been discussing this subject with a variety of professional people from perfumers to research scientists, from aromatherapists to producers and distillers.  I have also had the privilege of lecturing on this subject world wide at a variety of seminars and events, and conducted courses on the subject at numerous schools.  Indeed, Fragrant Studies International Ltd still offers the basic course “The Quality of Essential Oils” quite regularly and this eye-opening series of lectures is always well received by aromatherapists.  One of the strengths of this course is that it is not biased toward Fragrant Earth.  My reputation has been built upon neutrality and, once the listener has comprehended the meaning of the question “what is a good quality essential oil”, then its easy to see why neutrality between suppliers is easy to understand.  This short article is therefore only a précis of a full day’s lecture.

1. Quality is a notion, it is not an absolute.   We must firstly define what we want to use the essential oil for.  So at Fragrant Earth we define quality as ‘fit for a stated purpose’ and no more than that.  Calling a chocolate ‘Quality Street’ does not make it the worlds best chocolate compared, say, to a handmade Belgian chocolate from a specialist.  Each has a role; each chocolate has a place in the market but the two are not comparable.  This holds true for essential oils.

2. If we accept that the word ‘quality’ has to have applied to it a designated purpose, only then can we say what is best for that specific purpose.  We have to clearly define what we want the material for.  Let’s say ‘aromatherapy’.  What is that?  There are many aromatherapies these days.  Some aromatherapy is no more than smelly fun.  Some aromatherapy is serious medicine.  Some aromatherapy is mass market beauty therapy.  Other aromatherapy is serious individual treatment.  What aromatherapy do you practice?  We have to be very honest about what we do – about the level of our training and what we expect to get from our material.

3. Essential oils are very different from each other.  The same plant grown in one part of the world, or in another soil, will yield something quite different from that grown in its native territory.  In addition, the way it is processed from harvest to storage, from storage to distillation, will affect the end result.  There is no doubt about this, and we cannot simply hide behind illusions.  Some essential oils are produced from bad material in the first place.  Some essential oils have many chemicals added to them to ‘improve’ them, or change them.  There is no point in arguing what is fraudulent, right or wrong.  At this point we simply have to accept that there are differences in essential oils.  Some brought about by man’s intervention, some coming about by nature itself.  We should realise then that essential oils are classified by manufacturers as industrial raw materials, aimed at a specific market, for example flavourings or perfume, etc.  These industries require the same taste, the same smell, from year to year.  So it’s pretty obvious to anyone with an ounce of logic that these industries will produce standardised materials.

4. Essential oils are standardised by their chemical componence. As hinted at above, essential oils in their primary production, coming from all over the world and sometimes from different varieties, have different chemical components.  We may see on a list for example – Geranium/ Pelargonium roseum.  That sounds fine and dandy.  But if it comes from China it will be different from that coming from Morocco.  China is cheaper than Morocco and so a blend can be made of the two, or some components taken out of one or added back to another, to simply arrive at the smell of geranium from that particular company or for a particular perfume.  These industrial products are sold on as “natural”.  Are they, or are they not?  That is a question for you to answer.  They mostly certainly come from nature but the standardised version, the reconstructed version, the rectified version, is not as near to nature as is possible.  In fact it’s probably quite a long way away from what the plant released in the sunshine from its leaves as an aroma from its essential oil.  So what do you want?

5. The British in particular have a penchant for believing that everything should be cheaper.  The supermarket mentality.  So what people want is low price and good quality.  The two very rarely go together.  At the end of this article there is a quote from John Ruskin which I would like you to consider very seriously.  (John Ruskin was a Victorian, English philosopher).  Essentially, you only get what you pay for.  Of course there is room for savings on scale of production and so on, but here we’re talking about plants, things that grow in the ground where there is a finite resource.  To understand essential oils for certain styles of aromatherapy perhaps medicine, fine fragrance or truly holistic treatment, we may have to look elsewhere than the standard industrial product.  Those industrial products are touted by those who delight in telling us that such and such an oil matched a standard GLC.  Such a notion simply tells you that the oil has been adjusted to conform to a standard.

6. There is a straight analogy with wine and essential oils.  We all know that you can buy cheap, mass produced plonk.  It’s good for getting drunk with and for social drinking.  Most however accept that there is a pleasure to be derived from experiencing the taste of wine.  We must now remember that the majority of so-called taste is in fact aroma or smell.  So the difference between a good wine and a fine wine is in its smell, its aromatic substances – just like essential oils.  A fine lavender grown at 1400 metres is entirely different from a lavender grown at sea level.  There is just something that the mind or taste captures that is not in the standard product.  However the finest wines, being in short supply due to the nature of the ground, the side of the mountain, the weather , the season etc., are always more expensive than their standard blended cousins.  It doesn’t matter whether the wine comes from Hungary, Chile, South Africa or France, there is always a difference of price.  This irritates some people because they can’t afford the best, so their irritation turns into knocking the best.  This emotional response has nothing to do with quality.  It’s the same sort of response as when a neighbour who sees a nearby new car they can’t afford, goes out at night and scratches the new one.  We cannot simply bury our heads and say that we can buy good quality essential oils cheaper and cheaper.  Obviously there is a difference between one company and another but the nearer you are to nature the more expensive its going to be.

7. Materials that are nearest to nature have to have, like wine, a ‘provenance’.  That means you know where something has come from, its origins, its sources, how it was produced and so on.  Few essential oil suppliers really know this about the products they sell.  Most essential oils are purchased from very big companies like Charabot, Adrian and so on.  These companies specialise in blending, or manufacturing for a purpose.  Aromatherapy does not feature very much in their interests.  Often oils are distributed via wholesalers, from wholesalers to small packers, small packers to different brands who sell them on to anyone from market traders to department stores.  So, in this sense, price isn’t always a guide.  After all an industrial lavender can just as readily be sold with a computer–produced label in a market or be found in a high class department store with a highly creative bottle and label etc.  This is partly a fault of the ignorance of the consumer who may not have the opportunity, or the knowledge, to tell the difference.  Again the analogy with wine is pretty exact.  Very few people in the UK, even 30 years ago, knew much about wine.  It’s only with the rise of the television wine pundits that people have begun to really notice the difference.  At Fragrant Earth occasionally we run smell and taste sessions where perhaps 40 lavenders (essential oils) are compared with each other.  Therapists love these events, soon become quite knowledgeable and realise that if you want to put something in a burner for a pretty smell at a dinner party there is no necessity to use ‘the best’.  Whereas if someone has a real problem with insomnia, then the best is to be preferred.  It’s a question of ethics not just a question of price.

8. A few suppliers (and Fragrant Earth is included in this group) offer speciality oils produced normally by small growers and specialist distillers.  They trade particularly in the market of those who want oils that are near to nature and have a very dynamic fragrance.  I believe that fragrance is all important in true aromatherapy.  There is a certain life to it, a certain characteristic or dynamism that is lost in the blending of the industrial process.  I personally favour wild grown material from species.  Of course this raises issues of ecology which I’m very particular about.  My second choice is from materials grown organically.  But not everything can be grown organically and I do not believe that ‘organically grown’ is a statement of quality in itself.  It is a statement about soil quality. We forget that the soil needs feeding appropriately.  So ‘organic’ is always good for the soil.  But if you put the wrong species in the wrong place and you use a new clone or a new hybrid that is tasteless in the first place, growing it organically is not going to do much for the produce!  This is now happening with essential oils.  Organic growing is a sound investment in ecology but the produce is not always the best if the farmer doesn’t think through what crops best on his particular land.

9. Essential oil quality is a very complex subject.  You have to decide what you are and look into your heart to see what your real ethics are.  At the end of the day it’s quite right that you need to make a profit but you also need to ask a question as to the nature of that profit.  Is it earned honestly?  People that attend holistic aromatherapists surely expect something different.  Do they really expect standardised product, industrial product, with a pretty label, that was purchased by the therapist because it was cheaper than a specialist brand?  There is room for harsh judgement here.  This is quite a different scenario from the consumer who has heard a little about aromatherapy, buys a fluffy ‘aromatherapy’ shampoo from a supermarket.  That’s called ‘point of entry’.  A professional therapist may have different brands for different circumstances.  It is a challenge too for those with a spiritual dimension to be forced to face the reality of essential oils.  Do you believe that a spirit of a plant really (if that is your inclination) lives in a diluted essential oil laced with mineral oil or turpentine?  It’s no good simply hiding behind a Gas Liquid Chromatograph.  These can be manipulated just as the essential oils can be manipulated.  We must face the fact, with new European legislation relating to ‘allergens’, essential oils are going to be increasingly manipulated.  We must face the fact that, for example, Bergamot is easily synthesised without too much difficulty and that some of the best synthetic reproductions of Bergamot essential oil are difficult even for the expert to distinguish from the genuine oil.  My words? – no.  Rather David Williams written way back in 1989. (book title?)

So, in conclusion, we must acknowledge that there are differences in essential oils.  We cannot logically expect to see any site, any shop, anywhere in the world saying ‘hey, buy me, I’m poor quality’.  Every essential oil I’ve ever seen for sale in a retail shop has said something about being pure and natural.  These are just words.  Unfortunately, at the end of the day you have to trust a supplier.  I suggest that Aromatherapists with heart, Perfumers that want something different, Therapists that practice medicine, should visit only suppliers with short lines of supply, who know what they’re buying and are working near to nature.  Such firms are not common and could not supply a vast retail market.  They could not supply a huge retail market like the United States or Japan in massive volumes.  Why?  Think about it.  There’s not much growing land up mountains.  There are not that many plants that are available from the wild.  There are not that many farms that can even go organic.  So I suggest that we get some reality into the quality market.  And for those who really love essential oils, to understand the real issues.  Want to know more?  Then why not come on one of our lecture days?  Write in to Fragrant Studies for the next available time.

“It is unwise to pay too much, but worse to pay too little; when you pay too much, you lose a little money, that is all.

When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the things it was bought to do.

The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot.  It can’t be done.  If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is as well to add something for the risk you run.

And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better.

There is hardly anything in the world that someone can’t make a little worse and sell a little cheaper – and people who consider price alone are this man’s lawful prey”

John Ruskin 1819 – 1900

Adulteration does occur and is not always easy to detect.  A GLC is not a guarantee of purity.  Here is a list of adulterations recently found in a number of essential oils.  Unusual?  No, just a number of oils picked out from the Beauty industry and off UK supermarket shelves.

LEMONGRASS cut with 75% diethylphthalate

LEMONGRASS cut with Di-iso-Octylphthalate

LAVENDER – a blend of natural and synthetic ingredients

TEA TREE with a strangely low terpinen 4-ol content

ROSEMARY cut with Eucalyptus plus synthetics

SWEET MARJORAM that was actually Thymus mastichina

FRANKINCENSE adulterated with Turpentine

ROSEWOOD cut with synthetic linalol and Ho Leaf

BERGAMOT made with synthetic oil

NEROLI cut with synthetic linalol and with linalyl acetate added.

MANDARIN cut with Sweet Orange

LEMON of a BP grade, not from a generic species and with high levels of neral

ROMAN CHAMOMILE cut with Lemon and Orange oils.

PEPPERMINT which was in fact Cornmint

YLANG YLANG 3 compounded from natural Ylang Ylang plus synthetics.

Cheap is cheap – and often false.  You get what you pay for!

© Jan Kusmirek : April 2004

Taxonomy is the science of naming things.  Botany is the science or study of plants.  Combining the two produces the scientific or Latin names that help identify species.  In recent years the population, and in particular gardeners, will have seen a number of name changes which has led to a lot of confusion as to what something really is.  For example, a classic example in the English speaking world is bluebell.  In England this refers to Hyacinthoides non-scripta, in  Scotland to Campanula rotundifolia, in Australia to Sollya heterophylla and in North America to species of Mertensia.

As with many things, the reason for this increasing confusion has at its heart politics.  Within the European Union there is a drive for what we may euphemistically call harmonisation.  It is better defined as standardisation.  The mind of the EU has in terms of bureaucracy a distinct communist flavour.  The new accession countries having just given up this system will know precisely what I mean when I say that a Dill plant growing in Poland should behave and grow as a Dill plant placed in France at least according to the bureaucrats.  Unfortunately nature doesn’t conform this way so the bureaucrats have been at trouble to try to remove from sale cherished and old national seed varieties, making them in fact illegal to reproduce.  The loss of gene pool resources was little thought of until the process was well under way.  It was of course non governmental organisations that first picked up this loss and institutions like the Henry Doubleday Institute in the UK pioneered the retention of valuable species and varieties that the EU in its harmonic wisdom had decided were no good for society for one reason or another.

Consecutive with these changes was, of course, the impetus that was given to the production of European new varieties.  It also opened the door to the patenting of these new varieties, which were themselves more often than not reliant upon precise fertiliser input, herbicide and pesticide use enabling a virtually guaranteed wall to wall production throughout Europe favouring the largest companies.  Unsurprisingly the common man or woman gets a little confused as to what is really going on and why there is the necessity to change the text books. 

Political interference is not a new phenomenon, especially in the continent of Europe.  The French and British in particular have been antagonistic for as long as one can remember.  The British won the empire-building race, often at the expense of the French.  Neither have the French really forgiven the British for Waterloo or together with the Americans, for getting their country back and giving them a seat at the United Nations on the Security Council!  This old antagonism  today surfaces in the way that the French language has been has been down graded as the “lingua franca” of the world by English.  French bureaucrats hate the spread of anglicised words and even have special laws about it. 

This empirical battle even spread to botany.  In the world of scientific knowledge British and French explorers slogged it out around the world, discovering plants and sending them back to Europe, giving them Latin names.  Sometimes they classified them the same and sometimes differently.  When a plant’s name is written out in full in Latin at the tail end will be the name of the person the plant was named after or discovered by.  For example Eucalyptus globulus La Balladiere. (Clearly a Frenchman won this particular point!) This empirical battle of the experts is at the root of why our bureaucrats found it necessary to try to harmonise things and the French methodology seems to be winning that battle.

We can view such matters in an amusing light and it does give rise to some problems.  As hinted above, there is a real concern that creeping standardisation has a clear political agenda in supporting the large companies, particularly those that are multi national in a European context.  If there is a contract between capital and government then standardisation is simply a control mechanism for labour.  Certain parts of legislation are used to blind the population at large with what is really going on.  The well-known British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, openly referred to EU Health and Safety policies as “creeping socialism through the back door”.    Her analysis has been shown to be very accurate. 

Why should we be discussing such matters?  Ask any Aromatherapist a few years ago what was their favourite oil for diseases caused by viral infections and you would probably get the answer Ravensara.  Life was simple, very few people actually sold Ravensara, we all knew what it was and where to buy it from.

My introduction to Ravensara came many, many years ago – even before I was involved with essential oils – when I first met Pierre Franchomme who, well over 25 years ago, was promoting the oil.  Not so long after, Fragrant Earth introduced the oil because Teddy Fearnhamm, and latterly Ulla-Maija Grace, were wanting to promote the material for its spectacular success for its anti viral properties. 

I also remember a conference, that Teddy Fearnhamm must have attended, at which it was suggested that Ravensara was no more than Camphor.  The information I supplied to her, which must now be some 18 years ago, was that this was quite wrong and that the essential oil of Ravensara did not even begin to resemble Camphor, which it does not. However that has proved to not be the whole story.

If you look on the current Price List of Fragrant Earth today you will see a very strange thing.  An essential oil called Ravensara but the Latin name attached to it being Cinnamonum camphora and in small print, in brackets, the name Ravintsera applied to it.

Quite regularly we now get letters from customers querying this, or sometimes even telling us that we don’t know what we are talking about.  Having introduced the oil, researched the oil for so many years, I think we do.  However, I wonder if the botanists past and present really knew what they were dealing with.  One thing that everybody seems to agree about is that the original Ravensara, as promoted by Franchomme, was a member of the Lauraceae family. 

The name Ravensara is now commonly used throughout the world simply because when we introduced it, in the English language it just rolls naturally off the tongue.  It is an easy word to pronounce and so the Latin name has also become the common name.  Originally we would have written the name Ravensara aromatica and frankly this is how I continue to think of the plant.  A quick review of the literature would find the following names that experts have been applying to the Ravensara used by Aromatherapists:

            Ravensara aromatica  

            Evodia aromatica

            Evodia Ravensara

            Agathophyllum aromaticum

            Agathophyllum Ravensara

            Ravensara anisata

            Laurus aromatica

            Cinnamomum camphora

This confusion is best left to the Botanists to sort out. However it does cause difficulties to the user. As an illustration: if Coffee was renamed Tea and visa versa what would you drink? Would you change your taste just because the name changed? I don’t think so. This is a most important point for those using Ravensara in Aromatherapy.

Perceived wisdom of the moment is that Ravensara, as used by the early promoters of oil, is actually Cinnamomum camphora.  We will discuss how and why this is used in a moment but let’s go back to confusion in the trade.  You will remember the conference I referred to above where some expert was saying that Ravensara was no more than Camphor.  What this did, of course, was to allow some unscrupulous traders who were unable to source proper Ravensara to start promoting ordinary Camphor.  Now unfortunately there is a tendency, especially among the British, to believe that everything can be bought cheaper.  So we can see that for a while Ravensara became a little suspect, hence the emphasis that companies like Fragrant Earth or Saffron Oils, under the aegis of Teddy Fearnhamm, remain proponents of true Ravensara and promoted the idea of provenance or authentic oils. This authenticity has always been the position of Fragrant Earth, since its inception, for professional Aromatherapists. 

Undoubtedly, as can be seen from the names above, botanists have a continuing argument as to what Ravensara really is.  Because we are increasingly governed by directives encouraging standardisation or legally enforcing changes Fragrant Earth now uses the Latin name Cinnamomum camphora.  Frankly, it’s not our business as to what botanists decide the plant is called.  Our business is to make sure that what we sold 20 years ago is still being sold today, because that oil works and it is the one that all clinicians are familiar with.  At the time another oil, Ravensara anisata, was available in small quantities. It was hardly used and never promoted and considered by some to be on the toxic side.

Most suppliers are far removed from the source of supply and they have to rely on things like GLC traces not knowing where their material comes from.  This raises other issues.  Reliance on a GLC is all well and good but the testing laboratory is only going to standardise based upon commercial samples that are given in the first place.  If you think it through, those commercial samples can be very varied.  Let’s take as an example the following.  A laboratory asks for a sample of Cinnamomum camphora.  Correctly the laboratory has asked for the Latin name because that’s more accurate than the common names.  In their opinion so far so good.  If you now look at a list of essential oils and find Ho Wood or Ho Leaf, you will also see Cinnamomum camphora.  So with which does the laboratory get supplied? Cinnamomum camphora is a very varied species with quite specific geographic sub species and chemo types of essential oil. Room for error is obvious.

The home of Ravensara aromatica is Madagascar.  Madagascar, as we may have seen from various TV programmes, is one of the unique places on earth.  It is a huge island – the fourth largest in the world.   – off the African coast, in the Indian Ocean.  It has a flora that is very special.  When a plant is confined to a specific place, it is called endemic.  Much of the flora of Madagascar is endemic.  Madagascar, hardly on the tourist list, is considered a paradise for naturalists.  About 11,000 species are endemic, only to Madagascar.  Unsurprisingly, Madagascar is therefore a conservationist’s priority.  Since Madagascar is subject to deforestation, the island is inundated with environmentalists and botanists.  New species are still being discovered. 

The colonising country most associated with Madagascar is France and the first explorations by botanists date from the mid 1600s.  Those of you familiar with the Ravensara aromatica listings will have noticed the name Sonnerat after the naming of the species.  The Sonnerat collection period dated from 1768 and Monsieur Sonnerat and his uncle, the then Governor of Mauritius – another Indian Ocean island – collected plants from Madagascar.  The Indian Ocean became a centre of flora exchange, species being transported from one island to another, from mainland India, Indonesia, right the way through to the African coasts.  Unsurprisingly, introduced plants to Madagascar mainly come from Mauritius along with Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The nearby African coast came under British control and we must not forget the Dutch who controlled much of the original spice trade.

Coming nearer to our own time, in the 20^th century the French colonial governments promoted the cultivation of aromatic plants for use in cosmetics and perfumery. Madagascar became well known for its Geranium, Ylang Ylang and Clove oil.

Due to the increasing popularity of Aromatherapy in the USA Ravensara has become sought after by that market.  With grant aid from a variety of sources, new plantations and distilleries have been set up.  Such grant aid always attracts academics, marketing experts and the usual bureaucracy that our society of scientific little boxes sets in motion.  Each and every turn has to have an expert other than, of course, the indigenous or native population who in scientific terms never know what they are talking about.  This applies to many medicinal plants. Eventually an active principle may be identified and isolated and a clone developed. By that time and at that point, rather cynically, the exploiting company or academic institution will have almost certainly set up a commercial situation that will certainly disadvantage those that knew about the properties in the first place. Let us hope that Ravensara by whatever name survives the process!

The EU, unbelievably, has allowed the patenting of plant applications in recent times.  These patents rest mostly upon “discovery” of traditional uses.  This is a gross abuse of our civil liberties and indeed our birthright, whereby indirectly we all own the natural plant resources of the planet.  Patents should be about discoveries we don’t know about, not about what we do know about.  An analysis of a particular substance is no more than that and its effects should not be patentable. 

Let us now turn to the traditional position of those who introduced Ravensara essential oil to the rest of the world.  The local population sees and uses two trees.  One tree smelled strongly of aniseed and was termed Ravensara anisata.  It is found as a tree up to 20m high with a reddish strongly aromatic smell. The tree has small green flowers. It grows in the difficult mountain terrain and as an endemic species is under conservation controls. This tree, the least used, had the common name of Havozo or Avozo.  Ravensara anisata has not been popular among Aromatherapists.  It is the bark that is used for distillation although more recently the leaves are being distilled.  Its distinguishing chemical feature has been Methylchavicol and Anethol.  Botanists have now, in their wisdom, decided that Ravensara aromatica and Ravensara anisata are one and the same thing.

The native population uses and calls a popular tree and resultant oil or brew, Voaravintsara or Ravintsara and, at today’s date, is botanically classified as Cinnamomum camphora.  Confused? It’s just a name change or clear up. Certainly the oils of the two trees (C.camphor and R.aromatica/anisata) are quite different.  It does not seem to me at Fragrant Earth too much of a problem because what I buy, sell and use is what I have used in therapy for the last many years.  The source has remained the same, the indigenous people have remained the same and they know what they are doing. 

Elsewhere on Madagascar the new distilleries have obviously had to make up their mind what they are selling and at the end of the day oil suppliers will have to comply with the names and terminology that is imposed upon the species.  So in effect for me and for a large number of therapists confusion arises only if and when they switch supplier or if and when new textbooks begin to be written. 

The best approach I believe to be as follows – and this is where analysis becomes useful.  Let the botanists argue as to what something is.  We as therapists however have the choice of three materials –

• one that is rich in Cineole, commonly called in the past in Aromatherapy Ravensara (now Ravintsara);
• two that are rich in Methylchavicol commonly called in Aromatherapy Ravensara anisata (but now for commercial reasons too increasingly called R.aromatica) from the bark of the tree and one from the leaves.
• None should be confused with Cinnamomum camphora from the Far East, Ho Wood or Ho Leaf, Linalool rich.  This is a simple way of avoiding confusion. 

I don’t want to get into the situation of being the definitive guru on Ravensara.  The sketch above probably outlines further battles over nomenclature to come.  It is up to the supplier to identify what he is selling and to try to communicate this to his customer base.  Obviously newcomers are very anxious to establish their credentials by being scientifically accurate.  Long-term suppliers with provenance and simple supply lines don’t have to do this in the same way.  All they have to do is identify in effect that this is the material or source that the original textbooks refer to. 

I think all of us in Aromatherapy have to face up to the main point –the oil introduced by Pierrre Franchomme and promoted by Teddy Fearnhamm and others and used successfully in Aromatherapy was generally called by Aromatherapists in Europe Ravensara aromatica.  This is the so-called Ravintsara from Madagascar.  Whatever botanists may call it, even if it is not the true or correct nomenclature as Ravensara aromatica, this is the oil that matters.  It is quite easy to see that at the beginning Ravintsara was wrongly called Ravensara and was, over the years, labelled Ravensara aromatica when in fact it was Cinnamomum camphora.  L’aromatherapie Exactement by Franchomme & Penoel, under Ravensara aromatica quotes 1,8 cineole as the major constituent.

In future listings Fragrant Earth will move to calling this product Ravintsara, which will be distilled from the leaves and ex-Madagascar.  We will use the name Cinnamomum camphora L. CT cineol (ex Ravensara aromatica).  This, I am sure, will satisfy nobody but should, to those practicing therapists, explain everything!  A simple way of knowing what you have in the bottle is that if it smells of aniseed in any way then it is not the original Ravensara (however, please note it is not botanically Ravensara aromatica).

It is thought that the Cinnamomum camphora tree was introduced into Madagascar in the 19^th century.  Others however suggest it was much earlier via missionaries, perhaps even the Dutch. This Ravintsara can be found growing everywhere there are people, it’s a popular plant. You will see it quite commonly on balconies and in pots! It is not necessarily surprising that the tree produces a different oil in Madagascar than in its own Far Eastern heartland.  Cineole, Linalol, Safrol and Nerolidol are chemotypes known to exist.

If we accept that Sonnerat was right in his identification in the 18^th century of Ravensara aromatica and assuming that Ravintsara as a common name did not exist at the time for Cinnamomum camphora, then we have to query the use of the name R.anisata as a synonym. In 1950 a species was identified by Danguy as Ravensara anisata because of the perfume that came from the tree.  It is now said they are one and the same thing.  However in terms of the essential oil, Ravensara anisata is nearly always sold as representing the oil produced from the bark of the tree.  This is the one with the strong Methylchavicol content.  The oil produced from the leaves is sold increasingly today as Ravensara aromatica. Be aware that this has a completely different chemical composition, being mainly composed of Sabinene, Limonene and Myrcene with Methylchavicol. This so-called real oil (in botanical terms) is the one nobody wanted before!

Altogether a confusing story and one that requires a little knowledge of suppliers and their policies.  Putting things straight is no bad thing but it takes time.  No one should run away with the idea that one company is plain ignorant or playing games or “I’m the better guru”.  There has been confusion in the past and I hope this article has somewhat helped to explain the issues involved.  In any event, if you see Cinnamomum camphora called anything like Ravensara coming from anywhere else than Madagascar, then watch out!

It is the therapist who is at the working end of essential oils.  It is the therapist who sees what works.  It is true that they have to have confidence in their supplier and it is they who have to make the decision of with whom to place their confidence and trust.

At the moment demand for Ravensara outstrips the supply and is likely to do so for some time.  It is one of the most valuable oils in the Aromatherapy repertoire and, supply permitting, has the potential for becoming a star such as Lavender or Tea Tree. 

Another star on the horizon that will give botanists a field day, no doubt almost replicating the Ravensara botany story, will be Kunzea ambigua with the common name of Tick Bush, from Australia.  Once this becomes popular I can see the botanists finding alternatives but, at the moment, verbally we stick to the names Kunzea and Ravensara because in popular parlance in Aromatherapy and in the popular books that’s what they are still mostly called.

© Jan Kusmirek 2004

or How come we can buy essential oils all year round?

First published in 2004 and still relevant!

In a modern world, in the developed countries, we have lost sight of seasonal patterns.  Old timers will remember that it was not so long ago that one bought food and cooked food in tune with the seasons.  We used to understand that harvest time was a season of abundance and that there was a hungry gap between the end of winter and the beginning of spring. 

With the rise of the supermarkets this seasonal balance was lost.  Many modern youngsters believe that they should be able to buy fresh apples in April and spring greens in December, buy fresh roses at Christmas and Christmas roses in June.  The supermarkets and hypermarkets, in their greedy desire for profit at any price or cost to the environment, have exploited the Third World countries.  These countries produce cash crops and transport produce from one half of the world to the other at great cost to the environment and often at great cost to the Third World countries themselves.  Such countries know all about poor harvests and famine and the fluctuations of nature.

CAN ESSENTIAL OILS BE BOUGHT ALL YEAR ROUND?

To many buyers, aromatherapists included, essential oils are mere commodities – something to be purchased when they want, where they want and at a price they want.  There seems to be some strange belief that you can buy an essential oil from any place and at any time, and it should be exactly the same.  Even amongst educated aromatherapists there seems to be a gullibility that allows a chemical analysis to fraudulently lead to the belief that one essential oil is the same as another.  Our nose tells us something quite different. 

Aromatherapy has, however, become big business and those sellers of essential oils around the world whether in Japan, the United States, Great Britain or France, do want essential oils when they want.  Supermarkets, department stores, and even therapists, seem to demand an unending supply regardless of harvest, weather and distillation possibilities.  In the main they are duly satisfied by essential oil suppliers, little realising, or perhaps not even caring, that what they offer their customers is no more than a chemical soup.  One cannot blame the supplier but one must ask the question Who is responsible for this?  Is it the sheer ignorance of the buyer, the consumer or the user?

Consider this:  Aromatic plants grow best and provide the most superb aroma when they are grown at the edge of the optimum environment.  They often grow on so-called ‘poor’ soils but that are just right for the aromatics, the perfumes that grow from such soils.

When you are a real plantsman and genuine grower, a lover of the soil, you know that plants have a strong sense of place.  You can feel it in the soil. You can feel it in the plants that grow.  This is not romantic nonsense and is known to every wine lover around the world.  True, as one Biblical reference suggests, you can throw pearls to pigs and they don’t appreciate it.  Today one can drown in vinegar and propylene glycol that is sold as wine but that just tells us that the audience is uneducated and has poor taste – both metaphorically and literally.  The same can be said of essential oils and perfumes.

CULTIVATED versus WILD

Undoubtedly the best aromatics come from land that is uncultivated and wild, whether this be Lavender or Chamomile, Cedarwood or Thyme.  You only have to walk the land, feel and touch the plants, to understand this.  Unfortunately the few ‘experts’ that debate about wild crafting, or comment on what should or should not be done in the environment, have little real experience of the beauty of essential oils from the world’s natural resources.  Of course the wild needs protection. Of course endangered species should be protected. But not every wild crafter is an environmental rapist, not every government agency is stupid, not every essential oil distributor is a rogue. 

Rather there are many people who have been concerned about the developing of such rich resources and protecting those resources before many of the johnny-come-lately environmentalists were born.  This is especially so of tribal communities, of ancient village communities and local crafts people who are well aware of the destruction that greed and demand from the developed countries have wreaked on their land.  Often it is the academic experts from around the world from, say, Aberystwyth to Tokyo, that have been at the bottom of the advice that has destroyed a great deal of land.

Those truly dedicated to aromatherapy, the classical aromatherapists, those with a passion for nature and real plants, understand only too well that there is a finite limit to the very best.  The average consumer does not always realise this.  Led by the supermarket mentality of cheap food, consumers think that essential oils can be turned on like a tap, with an unending supply.  That is just not true.

FACTS ABOUT GROWING LAVENDER

We can briefly review the most popular essential oil of all time to illustrate the difficulties that affect the supply of essential oils.  This oil is of course Lavender.  French Lavender in particular is famous world wide.  Yes it is grown in Tasmania; yes it is grown in Norfolk; yes it is grown in the Balkans; and yes it is grown in the Crimea; but they all vary, they are all different.  Chardonnay from France is different from Chardonnay from California.  Ask yourself then how something that was a dry wine becomes something that is fruity and sweet?  The answer is not always in the chemical factory but a difference in the soil and the clone – something that appears to be the same is not always the same.  For example, to suggest that one can buy wild Alpine Lavender and supply the world is simply ridiculous.  It is not possible.  It is not really even possible to supply large volumes of High Altitude Lavender.  It is not even actually possible to supply really large volumes of true Lavender. 

This comes as a remarkable surprise to many purchasers.  Here are some basic facts:

True Lavender is grown at an altitude of between 800 and 1800 metres.  The 1800 metres height is very rare indeed and is truly a speciality product.

The yield per hectare at the lower heights (800 to 1000m) is between 12 and 20 kilograms and nearly all of this goes to the select perfume industry and specialised aromatherapy companies like Fragrant Earth. 

The total tonnage produced of essential oils is between 40 and 50 tonnes.  That’s it – no more.  It includes good oil, bad oil, high altitude, middle altitude and so on.  There really isn’t very much to go round. 

Most of the Lavender is produced in the Ardeche, Drome and High Alps by a relatively small number of growers, numbering just in the hundreds. 

The majority of Lavender is grown by co-operatives – groups of farmers who join together, perhaps using one central distillation unit.  This is the commonest way that fine Lavender is produced.  Several crops are blended together to give a co-op standard.  If the Lavender is grown in Provence, it will be given an AOC mark, AOC meaning Appellation d’Origine Controlée – simply meaning that it has been government approved, or stamped, guaranteeing that it comes from where it says it comes from.  This is a French system and it is also applied to some of the old French colonial territories like the island of Reunion.  Wine drinkers among our readers will recognise that this is exactly the same system that is applied to fine wines.   Co-op Lavender with an AOC mark is good Lavender but it is not necessarily the best.  Each grower may compete for medals based upon aroma and other merits.  A number of specialised growers also have their own stills or favour putting their crop for distillation to a small and expert distiller.  This often applies to organic growers who want their product separated from general or standard co-op Lavender. 

Altitude plays a part in quality and the majority of Lavender is farmed between 800 metres and 1000 metres by co-operatives.  Remember too that one side of a mountain produces something different from the other side of a mountain.  There are many quality parameters that combine to make some materials scarce or even rare.  Much of the material sold by Fragrant Earth is classed as High Altitude, a phrase that many co-op farmers would shrug their shoulders at.  After all they are in the business of the mass market as far as is possible and, truthfully, it is not really practical for a co-op to grow such a specialised crop.  For many years Fragrant Earth has, however, offered well grown material from specialised and selected growers from altitudes even as high as 1600 metres, which is virtually unheard of !  These specialists may produce even as few as 5 or 10 kilos per year, but what they do produce is sought after by the cognoscenti, those that really know. 

Actually the term Lavender itself is very misleading because it includes a number of species and covers a multitude of meanings.  Let us be clear about what we mean at Fragrant Earth.  Our High Altitude and Wild Lavender is true Provence Lavande Fine from Lavandula angustifolia or officinalis.  This is true population Lavender.  That means that each plant is unique, it is different, it has no particular parentage, it is natural.  Every single plant varies in shape, size, colour or fragrance all of which gives a wonderful subtlety and complexity of aroma and, incidentally, ensures that no bug, virus or anything else can adapt to it. 

Beyond this comes cloning.  Every good gardener knows that you can take cuttings from woody plants.  Cuttings are essentially clones.  This means that a specific plant has been taken from a population, perhaps with a certain shape or a certain flower or, particularly with Lavender, having a higher yield and the ability to grow at lower altitudes.  The common varieties of clonal Lavender are Maillette and Matheronne.  We offer an excellent Maillette clonal Lavender, organically grown.  This too is good, general ‘work horse’ Lavender.

WHEN LAVENDER IS NOT LAVENDER

It will surprise many that the majority of Lavender that is sold is in fact Lavendin, a hybrid Lavender, a cross between True Lavender and Spike Lavender.  Lavendin is grown because it yields essential oil 5 or 6 times higher than that of true Lavender.  It also has the commercial benefit of growing at lower altitudes than Lavender.  The aroma of Lavendin is always dominated by camphor although Lavendin Grosso has lower camphor content and its fragrance is not so far away from true Lavender.  The yield of Lavendin is well over 1,000 tonnes and accounts for most of the so-called Lavender that people are buying.  The Plateau of Valensole is the Lavendin capital of the world and the co-operatives are kings of this world.  Lavendin helps to make up many of the chemical ‘soups’ that are sold as Lavender.  Perfume and other companies buy in varieties of Lavendin and Lavender, mix them, blend them, add natural or synthetic components to them, whatever is required to arrive at smells that purport to be Lavender.  These are sold around the world at different prices in different ways, often to an unsuspecting public and often to an unsuspecting therapist who believes that a GLC will determine what is authentic and what is not.  That is only true to some extent.

These adjusted “Lavenders” have many uses.  One of the greatest uses is to neutralise the odour of detergent – it acts like a white out if added at the right proportion, making the unpleasant detergent smell neutral.  After that, many other types of fragrances can be used in the material.

BUYING IN HARMONY WITH NATURE

So let’s be real.  If you want the best then you have to accept the difficulties that go with it.  The best is not always available, whether it is Lavender, or Thyme of a specific chemotype, or Cedarwood coming from a specialised area.  There are harvests and growing cycles that have to be taken into consideration.  At Fragrant Earth we also have a policy of choosing the best distillers.  Often our material comes from those who are medal winners or prize winners in competitions for their essential oils.  For example, we look for distillers who use both old fashioned methods and new types of stills, such as hydrodihesion.  We do not use materials that are ‘green’ or shredded and immediately distilled.  We avoid co-operative blends where possible, preferring single source material from named growers.

All of this makes for fine fragrances.  If you are a lover of nature and a lover of perfume, a lover of essential oils, a lover of plants, then you will understand the shortages that come from supply.  You will understand the necessity to buy when available.  You will understand the value that an essential oil will have and you will have the intelligence to appreciate it through your senses.  Be quite sure – the best is finite.  Understand that if you sell on commercially that there may be problems in the continuation of supply.  Be prepared to switch from a wild Alpine type to a clonal Maillette type should the season run dry.

Remember that Fragrant Earth works near to nature, near to growers, with short supply lines.  We do not readily substitute materials and we do not hide behind the generic term Lavender.  Rather we really tell you what is going on and offer you the best without compromise.  If you believe that chemistry is all that counts in aromatherapy then this material is not for you.  If you want to sell it in a supermarket and have reproducibility and regular supplies then, again, such material is not for you.  If you are in therapy where impact counts, where your desire is for a simple aroma to change the immune system, then this type of essential oil is for you.  If you are a true perfumer, you already know.

© Jan Kusmirek

July 2004

The media has had a field day just lately, seeing toxic dangers everywhere arising from nasty chemicals in our immediate environment, and blaming them for the hitherto unexplained rise in allergies – as manifested by symptoms of eczema and asthma. To be fair, there is certainly a cause for concern in this area: for example, Melke (2003), referring to Bristol University’s Children of the Nineties study, reveals that nearly one in three children has suffered eczema by the age of three-and-a-half, which is triple the rate in the 1970’s. Part of this media attention is generated by the EU Chemicals Policy, which aims to evaluate all substances which impinge on the environment, and has highlighted chemicals used variously in the home, garden and working spaces. Against this background, the wariness of the Alternative Health Movement towards synthetic chemicals is already legendary, having been previously commented on by Vickers (1995), who contrasts the positive concepts of natural, organic, spiritual, healthy & holistic against those of the synthetic, chemical, unhealthy and mechanistic. Certainly, levels of undesirable chemicals such as those used as flame retardants (like polybrominated diphenyl ethers), insecticides, carpet & upholstery matrix materials, plasticisers (such as alkyl phthalates) etc. are now commonly found in Western homes and in our workplaces, and their long-term persistence in human bodies is cause for enough for health concern.

Fragrances – the new bête noir of environmental  pollution?

The finger of suspicion is also pointing at fragrance volatiles – one is tempted to say, raising it to a level of near-paranoia. Pat Thomas (2004) in a recent article in the normally sensible periodical The Ecologist, suggests that there is no difference between conventional perfumes and pollution, saying “fragrance chemicals… include … many other known toxins capable of causing cancer, birth defects, central nervous system disorders and allergic & asthmatic reactions”. It is surprising therefore that those of us who have been employed in perfume factories breathing in these allegedly noxious ingredients at high odour concentrations for much of our working lives, seem to have enjoyed such rude health over the years! Moving swiftly on, Thomas goes on to list “forty-one known (fragrance chemical) ingredients” found in the perfume Eternity Eau de Parfum (Calvin Klein). Thomas suggests that some of these “known” ingredients reproduced below may have dangerous properties, although no actual concentrations of components allegedly contained in the perfume are given. Once the curious non-systematic chemical names in the text are translated, you may recognise one of these “dangerous” ingredients  as vanillin, which you might find lurking as a flavouring in the exceedingly toxic local national dish “Crème Anglaise” (or custard as it is alternatively known!).

Benzyl acetate – said to be irritant and also said to be linked to pancreatic cancer.

Benzenemethanol (aka benzyl alcohol) – said to be irritant, CNS disruptor & carcinogen.

Benzeneethanol (aka phenylethyl alcohol) – said to be a CNS disruptor, carcinogen, affects bone marrow etc.

Cyclopentadecanolide – hormone disruptor, irritant, carcinogen.

Eugenol – said to be an irritant, a cause of contact dermatitis, pesticide & insecticide ingredient.

a-Terpineol – said to be highly irritating to mucous membranes and a CNS disruptor.

Benzaldehydehyde, 4-hydroxy-3-methoxy (aka vanillin) – irritant to mouth throat eyes etc…kidney damage, CNS disruption

Of course in the real world, toxic effects of chemicals are directly related to the dose, and splashing 0.03 ml of alcoholic perfume containing minor concentrations of these components behind the ears is unlikely to promote the effects listed above, even in a small minority of extremely susceptible individuals. Further, many of these components identified are identical to those components naturally occurring in the scents emitted from flowers, meadows & pine forests, or are responsible for the odour & taste of spices and natural flavourings etc. – so what are we to do? Mow down all the flowers and trees, since they give off these dangerous volatiles?

Odours from Living flowers and trees

Here are a few examples of the same “toxic” chemical odours listed above in the Calvin Klein perfume, as are given out naturally by living flowers:

Benzyl acetate – in jasmin, narcissus & hyacinth headspace odours and in gardenia oil, ylang ylang oil & cananga oils.

Benzyl alcohol – headspace odour of picked jasmine flowers, narcissus, lily of the valley, hyacinth, honeysuckle, water-lily & meadowsweet.

b-Phenylethyl alcohol – headspace of rose varieties including the yellow tea rose, broom, phlox, & daphne.

Cyclopentadecanolide – found in the scent glands of the musk rat! Other w-macrocyclic lactones are found in forest floor litter and the sun-struck resin of Pinus pinaster (Kaiser 1997).

Eugenol – in the headspace of hyacinth flowers & carnation flowers; and in the oils of clove, cinnamon leaf, pimenta berry, W.I. bay oil, & basil oil CT linalol.

a-Terpineol – in headspace odour of flowers of white freesia, polyanthus, lotus, and in the headspace odour of pine oils & resins.

Benzaldehydehyde, 4-hydroxy-3-methoxy – in vanilla beans, peru balsam, & benzoin resinoid.

So in reality we are continually exposed to emissions of natural materials – for example – as the volatiles from flowers and from leaves. Schenk (1979) has estimated that 438 million tons of monoterpenes evaporate into the air continually from biological material sources – and we are probably the better for it, in terms of the pleasure it gives us!

A Miscellany of Topics regarding Flavourings, Cosmetics,Volatiles and Health.

Attention is also given by the press to synthetic chemicals consumed as flavourings. Corkwise, which we are told is a company of analytical chemists in Surrey, have been finding (added?) pyrazines in South African & New Zealand wines, and theorising over their significance. The same article quoting the above findings (Lawrence 2004) reveals that Michael Fridjhon, a wine critic, has indicated elsewhere in print, that ranges of fake flavourings are used to give characteristic notes to retailed wine, such as blackcurrant flavouring added to Cabernet Sauvignon. Strange that we don’t seem to worry overmuch about any health effects of these unnatural additions to “real” wine. More scary still, (Ravilous 2004) has also run stories on findings of a material in mains water supplies called ptaquiloside, which results from bracken poisoning the water all over the world. Ptaquiloside is capable of causing cancer epidemics. Meanwhile this year also Poppham (2004) reports on the carcinogen methyl eugenol in Ligurian basil leaves used to prepare Italian pesto, the levels of which were alleged to be 600 times over the accepted safety limit (quoting Prof. Francesco Sala of the Umberto Veronese Foundation). Unquantifiable concerns facing aromatherapists regarding methyl eugenol exposure from essential oils used in massage have been discussed recently by the author (Burfield 2004).

A further article alleging health concerns from fragrances was presented by Hilpern (2004), this time in a pull-out supplement of The Independent newspaper, and covered similar ground. A quote from Lindsay McManus of Allergy UK is included, who informed us that ‘second hand scent is more serious than second-hand smoke’. Hilpern points out that Halifax, Nova Scotia discourages the wearing of fragrance in public places, and Santa Cruz, California bans the wearing of fragrance at public meetings – perhaps this restriction will spread? The well-known anti-fragrance campaigner Betty Bridges is also quoted in the article, suggesting that people ask for products which don’t contain fragrances [Betty Bridges had previously published a highly referenced article on health and environmental concerns from fragrances (Bridges 2002) which concluded that there needs to be a system where adverse effects of fragrance chemicals are recorded and evaluated. Bridges also mentions aromachology in the scope of her article].

Cameron (2004) also reports on negative health effects from cosmetics, stating “without exception, modern perfumes are manufactured entirely from petrochemicals”. It is not disclosed however if the author drives a car – petrol production inherently is connected with by-products which need outlets – and fragrance chemicals – many/most of which have undergone rigorous testing procedures – are a socially beneficial outlet for these co-produced materials. Further, lets not forget that if we are looking for bogeymen, the combustion engine has a lot to answer for – particulates & emissions themselves are responsible for high levels of respiratory and other diseases.  Cameron quotes the Journal of American Toxicology (no further reference details) on fragrance chemicals penetrating the skin advising: “some (fragrance chemicals) have been shown to cause discolouration of internal organs, others are toxic to the liver & kidneys. Some accumulate in fatty tissue and are passed on in breast milk”….

Whilst I pass on the prospect of bleached kidneys, I’d like to remind readers that the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials is an independent international organisation (established in 1973) which actively investigates the safety of fragrance materials. It has indeed found that one or two fragrance materials such as acetyl ethyl tetramethyl tetralin and musk ambrette are neurotoxic, and the International Fragrance Research Organisation (IFRA) has recommended that these substances be prohibited from use in perfumery under self-regulation. This doesn’t mean that you won’t still find musk ambrette as an ingredient of joss sticks brought back from your holiday to India – but it means that you can check on the full list of IFRA prohibited and restricted materials in perfumes which can be freely viewed at http://www.ifraorg.org/GuideLines.asp. This illustrates the responsible attitude that the fragrance industry takes towards safety, and you, gentle reader, as a member of the public, can ask your supplier of fragranced product whether the fragrance in question is IFRA compliant – although adherence to IFRA regulations is just one of the regulatory safety hoops a marketed perfume will proably need to jump through. It is true that we are learning more about toxicology all the time – after all, less than 100 years ago we used to put copper sulphate in canned peas to make them appear green! Now we can add some safe ghastly green dyestuff instead!

Volatile Organic Carbons.

Hilpern and (separately) Hawkes (2004) covering the same theme on toxic domestic chemicals, refer to a well publicised study, by Alex Farrow et al. (2003) and since as it has attracted so much media attention, we will consider this article in more detail. Farrow looks at the catch-all category of volatile organic carbons (VOC’s), and is concerned with the health of mothers and infants in relation to total exposure to VOC’s (TVOC’s) from household products. To carry this out a large number of medical histories were followed over twelve months, and TVOC’s were determined in 170 home environments of Avon, with the help of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Partents & Children Study Team. It becomes clear fairly early on that the term VOC’s in Farrow’s study refers to propellants in aerosols and solvents in airfreshners, such as toluene, m-xylene, which were assessed by Tenax tubes placed in the subjects living rooms and bedrooms. No distinction is made between solvents and fragrance ingredients, so the class of compounds responsible for the observed symptoms is unclear.

Farrow et al. found that higher airfreshner & aerosol use increased the TVOC concentration, and that infant diarrhoea and earache were significantly associated with airfreshner use; diarrhoea & vomiting were significantly associated with aerosol use. Headache in mothers at 8 months or more past birth was significantly associated with the use of airfreshners & aerosols; maternal depression was significantly associated with the use of airfreshners.

The findings of this relatively small-scale study are quite thought provoking, and appropriate explanations are even more so! Little hard data on VOC’s really exists in the literature. Some papers are reviewed by Farrow et al. on chlorinated solvents and oto-toxicity (oto- meaning ear), and on urinary tract disorders from solvents in mature females seemingly associated with impaired immune system responses. Farrow himself has previously looked at the relationship between nitrogen dioxide levels as an indoor pollutant, and infant gut well-being. It is also intriguing to remember recent findings that babies born by Caesarean section suffer more from infant diarrhoea¹ and other conditions that those born normally (perhaps because of the beneficial effects of micro-flora gained via passage down the birth canal) – making it more difficult to establish a base-line for “normal” health. It is also permissible to think about chicken and egg situations – do mothers use more airfreshners & aerosols when diarrhoea and sickness visit the family members, or say, when they are depressed (i.e. the connection is non-causative)? Most of all the connection between sickness and VOC’s as fragrance – which can include essential oils and absolutes, just as much as fragrance chemicals – is not firmly made here.

Conclusion.

A culture of fear (of terrorism) is currently being used both sides of the pond for political ends, but the axis of evil doesn’t necessarily extend to the collection of fragranced cosmetics on your bedroom dresser. Certainly many bad things are currently being laid at the door of household and home-care products, cosmetics and fragrances, including allegations of many minor illnesses and allergies. Phobias about synthetic fragrances are being pandered to by the media, who are obligingly providing plenty of scary, and often inaccurate, material. It isn’t a great step to include the volatiles from essential oils and flowers as unwanted VOC’s, which can invade the personal space of these sensitive chemophobic individuals, and which may provoke illness & distress, either real or imaginary….

My take on this is that VOC’s cannot be lumped together as a group as Farrow et al. has done, and proclaimed harmful per se. It is far more likely that specific toxic components (chlorinated solvents, aromatics like benzene) are the causative agents, and that fragrance components are being tarred with the same brush. In the case of fragrance phobia, the power of auto-suggestion is such, that a negative image of synthetics to some suggestible individuals people may “bring on” imagined symptoms.

As regards any inferences for aromatherapists from these reports, we can be assured that the safety of essential oils is a relatively well-studied subject. Whilst toxicological inhalation data on individual essential oils is admittedly sparse, topics like skin sensitivity and reproductive toxicity have been the subject of many studies, many of which are on-going. Further we have a fragrance industry which has been producing essential oils and absolutes for more than 140 years, and as mentioned previously, whose workers haven’t experienced serious occupational health problems like those found in mining, cotton and asbestos industries, in spite of the high levels of exposure to fragrance volatiles. The problem then is often more that those concerned with safety legislation matters in the EU, or at National Government level are not well versed in finding reference information – and so we get strange decisions like the suspension of the free use of citronella oil in retailed insect repellents in Canada on the basis of lack of toxicological data (!) The problem is arguably not one of lack of appropriate information, but leading the horse to the right trough!

First Published 04/06/2010

Perhaps there are three schools of thought about this. All three would take into consideration the individual and their condition and set an objective for treatment. First would be a learned approach, a mixture of looking up a textbook and taking a view based on the constituent chemistry. Second would be an intuitive approach almost based around creating a fragrance. This used to be the most common and then thirdly the traditional herbalist approach.

The latter blending system is quite simple and has been advocated since the dawn of time. It uses only  three materials. Three in ancient lore is a significant number (aren’t they all!). The idea was simple enough, first the therapist deals with the obvious symptom or issue. A choice is made of one ingredient then a further two are chosen, the second as an alternative to the first choice dealing with the primary cause and the third a support for the other two.   

A simple illustration maybe taken using arthritis. Now we know there is not an obvious ‘cure’ for this condition so a choice could be wintergreen for pain relief and warming at fifty percent. Lavender as a supporter for the same reason and then roman chamomile as a support for the other two being an anti inflammatory. Both the latter two would be at 25% to make the whole blend to be added to a carrier, probably in this case a nice gel base to which a floral water say of rosemary has been added.

Blending this way makes eminent sense and requires quite a bit of thought abut he client or patient yet keeps the blend simple. Often the text book blends are over complicated. Effective blends for common ailments rarely require a degree of sophistication that might go into a blend for someone with an addictive problem.

Those who blend for fragrance might consider a basic trend. Take a botanic family and work within it. Once we realise that a rose is a cousin of an apple we can see what in the same family matches or enhances a trend. Say we want a citrus aroma but cannot afford Neroli. Then using sweet mandarin modified by grapefruit and a lemon petitgrain we can end up with something quite floral. The proportions would be trial and error.  This is blending by family but the result should not be identifiable by the individual constituents, rather one achieves a citrus but with floral tones.

The synergies produced by Fragrant Earth International  have been adapted over the years to make elegant and effective blends for the clearly stated purpose or implied in the name. Not only have they been tried and tested, standing the test of time but have been devised or adapted from the experience of well respected therapists. They save time and money. Whilst these blends are not all exotic like the Meditation blend they nevertheless make cost effective use of the very best essential oils.

Remember blending from books is a hit and miss affair. Take a respected author and therapist like Valerie Worwood. She suggests many blends. However generic names like lavender tell you nothing. Valerie’s original blends would have come from specific essential oil suppliers who in turn would have selected sources for effect. A  lavender from Moldova is not the same as from the Alps of France. Blending therefore requires continuity and decent supplies of good oils.  

In the initial stages of Aromatherapy development in Europe little attention was given to perfumery as a source of facts, evidence, or inspiration. One of the key factors was the reluctance of fragrance brands and manufacturers to be associated with any form of medical claim or treatment. Aromatherapie in France was considered and officially limited as an accepted form of treatment but only administered by orthodox medically qualified doctors.

The Aromatherapy taught and practiced in the United Kingdom, initially the lead proponent of Aromatherapy had little in common with the French model. Confusion came about to some extent by the use of French names by the earliest practitioners of aromatherapy in the UK working within the beauty industry. High class London salons hosted such as Danièle Ryman or Micheline Arcier, students of Marguerite Maury. Marguerite Maury was not of course French her maiden name being of Austrian origin. Her therapeutic approach was anything but orthodox.

With a nursing background Maury, due to the influence of her husband, a homoeopathic doctor explored the principles behind homeopathy, naturopathy, osteopathy and radiesthesia. Her work became centred on the beauty of science, its symmetry and the behaviour of aromatic materials and their effect upon health. Aromatherapy developed not on the orthodox chemistry of Gatteffosse but on the principles that if we exercised, took care in diet, seeing our individual self in beauty, our energies and beliefs, all would sustain us through many of life’s problems.  Her technique developed a massage programme which has become the hall mark of modern aromatherapy especially as practised in the UK and Japan.

The perfume industry exists as a place of emotional response. Perfume is described by poetry and as no vocabulary exists in single words to describe the effect that our sense of smell may have poetry has to be employed. I am perhaps famous for teaching that any fragrance or scent has only two responses for humans, it will evoke or provoke. Either way an effect is produced, and our thoughts motivate us into more complex emotional patterns of appreciation or rejection.

Perfume has an overriding legal responsibility for safety which has become its main concern. The scents used today are far beyond essential oils, absolutes, and common natural substances. The petrochemical industry has been a major source of new synthesised volatile aromatic material. Today the demand for natural perfumes has led the industry into a host of chemical copycats of single molecules, then as chemically identical, said to be natural. Now the new world of fermentation process techniques provide sand construct mells unknown unknown to man or nature.

So the paradox of separation remains between perfume and aromatherapy. Both admit to emotional motivation. One concerns itself with healing the other the avoidance of medical connotation.

The one place they seem to have agreed about  is with description. When I first acquired a copy of The Art of Perfumery (and Method of Obtaining the Odor of Plants) by Septimus Piesse I had not realised he was the originator of the scale of musical notes attached to odours of all types. It seems natural to describe smells as musical notes linking, just like synaesthesia, one sense to another.  Maury later appreciated this by a clear understanding and implication the French word sentir translated both and either as feel or to touch, alongside its other meaning smell, hence the introduction of massage or the healing touch of aromatherapy.

Fragrance descriptions are based on this musical scale. The perfumer builds a pyramid of notes. top notes or head notes, middle notes or heart notes and low notes or base, or even bass, notes. As the composer, the perfumer will have to use all the notes to create a balanced fragrance. The three “notes” of the perfume make up the olfactory pyramid that is a visualization of their degree of volatility. This so resembles the herbcraft of the past whereby one herb specific to the condition was supported by two other relevant herbs.

Perhaps aromatherapy and its inability, due to regulation, to interact with perfumery as a whole has begun tom lose the art of Maury to chemistry alone. The first book I read on aromatherapy was by Robert Tisserand called the Art of Aromatherapy. Tisserand put his finger squarely upon the dichotomy between orthodoxy and alternative views of healing and medicine.

Creating an aroma of harmony should lie at the heart of the traditional approach. Perhaps book learning has led some to think purely of the safety and supposed efficacy of a blend. After all tea tree or niaouli are good enough medicinal smells and already meet the expectation of the client, likewise who can deny the beauty of neroli or ylang ylang.

All these have different characteristics and volatility and can be built into something for mind and body rather than single actions. This was the content espoused by Maury and her students, a creation of sensism and like a visual experience, beauty is in the eye of the beholder so smell is a personal taste. For me it is the farmyard that evokes peace but hardly acceptable as a fragrance.

Context and perspective is always required for example children react to bad tasting, smelling medicine so aromatics can change that rather than just adding sugar. End of life experience can be softened by aroma as we know. One experience that I encountered was with a South African lung cancer patient. He wanted the smell of Oranges. The relatives obtained some Jaffa oranges, but the patient was disappointed, but please note was not aware of the country of origin. Some South African oranges were purchased which immediately had the desired emotional response. Somewhere a nuance of aroma, which would have been minute in analytical terms had significant impact.

Piesse and his partner Lubin eventually created the odaphone an attempt to create a perfume to correlate to the musical notes on the diatonic scale. His idea was that you could create something from smells just like choosing notes from a piano using volatility like a scale. If you search Google you will invariably be inundated for ads and links to Vodaphone which shows how pathetic and commercial the net has become!

 Essential oils analysis is a complex procedure. At one end of the complexity scale, a smell or odour can consist of a very simple elemental chemical such as; tellurium which smells like the most pungent garlic.  On the other end of the scale a cooking smell, say of French fine cuisine, can actually consist of hundreds of different chemicals, which combined give a particular smell sensation for the gastronome..

Unfortunately for chemistry buffs similarly shaped molecules can have quite different odours, and molecules that look nothing alike in a linear representation can smell almost the same. The smaller the molecule the more intense the smell. Some chemicals are incredibly odorous e.g. Trimethylamine can be smelled at concentrations as low as 0.00021 parts per million or 0.0005 mg/m3. Some other known smelly chemicals have very high odour thresholds e.g. Ammonia 46.8 parts per million or 33 mg/m3. In Europe, dynamic olfactometry, as described by the European standard EN 13725, has become the preferred method for evaluating odour, now a long way from the more romantic methods of Piesse.

A very pleasing term use by Piesse is the word accord. It is certainly one I use in practice. The volatility scale by Piesse or other can still be used as a starting point. Remember an accord represents two elements that combine to make a third; in one case, it’s a musical composition, and in the other, a unique blended fragrance. The nose should smell a whole note not a set of easily differentiated smells. When elements are compounded, as they are in an accord, even with GLC techniques it becomes very difficult to ascertain the true analysis for replication because the foundations of the fragrance lies in minute traces of the components that comprise an accord with a certain scent.

This raises the much vexed question of quality and authenticity. Physical standards for essential oils have long been specified by the Association Française de Normalisation (AFNOR) as well as by ISO. Official opinions and guidelines, such as those from the International Fragrance Association (IFRA), the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials (RIFM), and the Scientific Committee on Consumer’s Safety (SCCS) regulate maximum quantities and uses of certain oils as well as single compounds therein.

The problems independent perfumers face using natural materials are the same as any aromatherapist. Standardised materials are not always what one wants. As mentioned above there are specific nuances that give different smells or results. There are only roughly 1 trillion scents that the human nose and brain can distinguish from each other, according to a new study at Rockefeller University in New York. Researchers in the 1920’s had previously estimated that humans could sense only about 10,000 odours but the number had never been explicitly tested before. So forget the wolf, we are not so limited as we thought.

The study highlights a growing interest in how combinations of odours—rather than single odour molecules at a time—are sensed and processed. If then a combination of odours an accord is indistinguishable by smell yet being very different at a molecular level then we have to review the idea of innate and learned responses based upon the stereochemistry of the individual molecule.

This is highlighted by the perfumers pyramid whereby consumers mistake the notes given for actual inclusions. So, an accord smells like bluebell but it does not have any, this is common for rose accords. No rose is present just a skilful combination. Various attempts have been made to tabulate essential oils and their odour since Piesse. William (Walter) Poucher who worked for Yardley, wrote a textbook published in 1923 which is still very much in use. He listed in order of volatility materials a grouped under respective evaporation coefficients (perfume notes) that ranging from 1 to 100. Today with the advent of the GLC which depends upon the volatility or weight of the molecule we have more accurate information.

 However, odours for essential oils have another method of classification. Probably Aristotle stared this off and it took a further 2000 years for Linnaeus to come up with another classification of odours.  Piesse a hundred years later chose his different route of notes. Due to our cognitive interpretation of an odour all present and previous systems are subjective, opinions and judgements. Nevertheless, passing through the hands of such fragrant luminaries as Rimmel, Poucher, Arctander and Parry a general consensus emerged but no industry standard. The paradigms of nature have been used to group smells and are as much applied to essential oils as perfumes.

The majority of ‘smells’ are then described as much an artistic exercise as anything. Regardless of odour description maps or fragrance wheels or major manufacturers such as IFF own set of tables, most of us are familiar with and understanding of terms such as floral, Woody, Animalic, Balsamic etc. These are associated into families so allowing for subcategories and accords could then become like children.

It behoves all holistic practitioners to review the traditional approach of blending for synergy which is a perhaps a more modern word than accord.  The opposite of this approach is the magic bullet of symptomatic treatment based upon usually a single element. Barbara Griggs used this phrase in her book The Green Pharmacy. The phrase can be used as much in ‘green’ context as mainline orthodoxy. There is a place in medicine for both but healing has a bias toward the holistic approach.

What is a triangle test

Simply put, a triangle test is a study in which you compare 3 samples and pick out the one that is different. Of the three samples, one is different while two are the same. If you can consistently pick out the different one, there is a pretty good chance that there is some difference that you’re picking up on. You might not always know what the difference is but sometimes that doesn’t matter. The key is that if you can notice a difference then there is probably something different about it.

When to conduct a triangle test

Triangle tests are useful whenever you need to determine whether a change in the formula is noticeable or not. So, they work well for…

• Fragrance evaluations – When you have an odour change and you want to see if there is a noticeable difference.
• New raw materials – To see if there is some performance effect by using a raw material
• Cost savings – Remove a raw material and see if anyone can tell a difference
• Formula development – See if changes you’ve made improve your results

The triangle test is one of the key tools that a cosmetic chemist has at their disposal.

A triangle test can be done by one person or by an entire panel of people. The former is best when making new prototypes and evaluating raw materials. The latter is better for making final decisions as it will give some statistics.

The first thing you to do is figure out what test you’ll run to compare the samples. For odour evaluations, this can be as simple as a “sniff test”. However, fragrance is more complex and one must learn how to “sniff” and to take into a consideration a variety of parameters and other techniques. Sniffing is not the best method!

Put the formulas in a small jars or bottles, label them and smell, touch or feel etc. Close your eyes for odour and texture and touch evaluations or with odour do it in a dark room so you can’t be influenced by colour. Colour in surroundings or on pack change perceptions.

You can use any number of tests such as foam tests, texture tests, moisturizing tests, touch tests, etc. It really depends on what you are testing and what characteristic you want to notice.

If you are doing a test in which you want to get some useful statistics, you need a panel of about 30 people before you get meaningful data. However, if the differences are significant decisions can be made on fewer subjects.

Ideally, if you are going to test the samples, you should have someone else make and fill the samples. At the very least you should have someone else fill and label them. That way you can be singly blinded and won’t be able to trick yourself.

Once you’ve tested the samples, it is helpful to re-run the test.

If the test was done with a panel of people you need to determine if there were statistically significant differences.

Jan Kusmirek©