Elizabeth Jones is a leading educator, healer, formulator, and advocate of using therapeutic essential oils for integrative medicine. She and her husband, Larry Jones, a chemist, own Elizabeth Van Buren Inc. offering quality products to practitioners, spas, hospitals, and stores nationwide. Every essential oil sold is GC/MS tested for purity.

Elizabeth's educational background

• The Master's School, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. graduated
  in 1959
• Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, N.Y. B.S. degree
  in 1963
• Experiment in International Living, Florence, Italy. One year study 1962
• University of California, Berkeley, Ca., Secondary Cred., Master's in Education 1972
• Botanical Aromatherapy, Marcel Lavabre, PIA, Kurt Schnaubelt, Aromatherapy and the Brain, Pierre Franchomme, Aromatherapy, Robert Tisserand, Fragrant Nose, John Steele

She is the Director of the College of Botanical Healing Arts, a state approved 501C3 non-profit with a 390-hour program to graduate Essential Oil Practitioners. It provides a curriculum rich in science, energetic healing, and an experiential clinic.The graduates of the school are using essential oils for their own clinical practice, teaching classes at the College, setting up stores with natural perfumery, administering them in hospice and nursing practices, and using them as integrative medicine to heal family, friends, and themselves.

Elizabeth plans to have a book published in 2007. She is one of the authors in World of Aromatherapy, edited by J. Rose and S. Earle, Frog Ltd., Berkeley, Ca. 1996. She promotes the use of plant energy in the form of essential oils, herbs, nutrition for her own community and nationwide. Elizabeth has been a speaker at many conferences such as Pacific Institute of Aromatherapy in San Francisco (2005) on Essential Oils and Viruses and Mammoth Lakes, Life and Wellness with Andrew Weil (2006) on Mind/Body Health.

Overview

Essential oil purity is a little discussed topic, but vital to essential oil therapy and to the future of Aromatherapy. In a NAHA survey, 100% of Aromatherapists agreed it is extremely important to have available pure and natural essential oils. However, most worldwide production of essential oils is sold as flavor and fragrance materials. The essential oil industry has a long tradition of altering essential oils in the form of "standardization" and/or "extending" them. Purity can be a problem with many big producers and distributors. Even small essential oil producers and distributors have a checkered history of quality issues and wrong chemotypes or post -production alteration.

As suppliers we should definitely know what we are buying and selling. The practitioner, student, and researcher should demand to know if their essential oil is real or at least close to the chemical distribution indicated by the botanical name on the label. Without analytical data to back up '100% pure', 'natural', or 'organic' on the label, even 'organic' will become trivialized like 'natural' has become.

Scientific analysis, preferably by GC-MS, of the product directly before the end user is the ideal way to insure the integrity of the oil purchased. Otherwise, you are on your own with a label that says pure and your nose that is not sure. At Elizabeth Van Buren we use analysis two ways: to constantly upgrade our essential oil sources and then we go on to analyze each lot of each oil. This assures you that no matter which Elizabeth Van Buren essential oil you purchase; it is going to be pure and high quality.

Organolyptic evaluation of essential oils

Smelling an essential oil is valuable for detecting some adulterants but mainly for off odor constituents such as "still" notes. These off odor components have little impact on the objective therapeutic value of an oil except for subjective psychological impression, which is important also. This is why Elizabeth Van Buren uses a panel to sort through prospective oils by smell, and then we analyze the oil. If the oil passes the availability test, the smell test and analysis, then we purchase it. We have found the GC/MS more often correctly identifies adulterated oils than even an experienced nose. The reality of this situation is, no one really knows what he or she is buying, selling or applying to a client by smell alone unless it has been thoroughly analyzed.

Analysis evaluation of essential oils

As Essential Oil Therapy is complex in its healing effects and is much more than smell, it takes much more than a nose to tell if an essential oil is pure. The only way to really substantiate the purity is to analyze the oil. More specifically to analyze it by Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS.) The GC-MS will tell you not just percentages of the many constituents of an oil, but directly identifies each constituent, natural or added. Then all this data is compared with previously run standards and extensive essential oil databases from other researchers.

This way, Spectrix Lab/Elizabeth Van Buren is going the second mile to make a complete evaluation of an essential oil by analyzing for both purity and quality by the most accurate means possible.

Purity:

A pure essential oil is one that is distilled or extracted from a single type of plant. EVB/Spectrix analyzes for the following adulterants:

• Non fragrant solvents
• Co-distilling with other plant material
• Fractions of, or other essential oils
• Synthetic 'nature identical' essential oil components
• Synthetic fragrance materials and their isomers

Quality:

An essential oil does not have to be adulterated to be inferior. Plant quality, harvest, and production technique have a lot to do with quality. Of course, environmental conditions directly effect the percentages of each component of the essential oil. Botanical variety and chemotype identification also play a part in quality determination.I have found some organic essential oils of lower quality than non-organic and some are not above adulteration. "Wild crafted" is another over-used term. Many imported essential oils come from non-plantation sources.

The priorities are:

1. The essential oil be high quality due to growing and distilling conditions.
2. Pure-Unadulterated.
3. GC/MS analysis reports to back-up 1 and 2.
4. Lastly, labeled natural, organic, wild crafted, etc.

Conclusion:

The last 10 years Aromatherapy's demand for clean, high quality oils has been stimulated by Elizabeth Van Buren/Spectrix constant vigil. We have made some impact on the production and distribution practices of the worldwide essential oil industry - All of us using essential oils as integrative medicine are creating a niche market for a new generation of essential oils. Analysis, preferably GC/MS analysis by and for someone interested in essential oil therapy, will continue to have a positive influence on essential oil purity and quality. Science may appear to pop the mysterious bubble around the metaphysical aspect of aromatherapy. But Spirit never shies from science and the earnest pursuit of truth, after all Spirit is the source of material reality and mind is the organizer. Science is the foundation from where we can build essential oil therapy into the lofty healing and beautifying art it is designed and destined to be.

Copyright 2000, 2002 Larry Jones
Analysis of Essential Oils for Purity and Quality, a Reality Check Lawrence Jones
President, Elizabeth Van Buren, Inc.

If you are interested in having analysis work done call or email: Larry Jones
Spectrix Lab
831-427-9336
Email:
larry@spectrixlab.com