Botanical Adulteration Program Creates New Section on Adulteration of Essential Oils

Essential oils, the volatile components from plants obtained by steam distillation or other appropriate techniques, have a long history of adulteration due to the fact that many of these oils are relatively expensive and thus represent an opportunity for unethical sellers to make a profit by diluting or substituting the labeled material with lower-cost essential oils, vegetable oils, natural or synthetic essential oil isolates, or various other diluents. Historically, adulteration was detected by evaluating the odor profile with the human nose, but advancements in chemical analysis have enabled finding more sophisticated types of adulteration, e.g., the addition of odorless diluents or essential oil isolates from other sources. The section on adulteration of essential oils currently contains a reprint of the review on essential oil adulteration, written by Erich Schmidt and Jürgen Wanner, two experts in essential oil analysis, and published in 2016 in the Handbook of Essential Oils, 2nd edition, which received the 2016 ABC James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award. In addition, Mr. Schmidt has graciously provided us a brief summary of the book chapter. Finally, the section also contains the Botanical Adulterants Bulletin on adulteration of tea tree oil, published by the Program in August 2017.