Stored and Transported For Therapeutic Values

Once essential oils and hydrosols are produced, they must be treated with care and must remain in their perfect state until the moment they are used. It sounds easy, but this is the stage at which much of the tampering actually takes place. Essential oils are frequently adulterated, fractionated, or boosted by real or synthetic chemical isolates to "improve" odor or simply increase volume and therefore profit.

Suffice it to say that even buying direct from distillers is not without pitfalls, and the large distributors and brokers of essential oils maybe many hands down the line from a honest producer. It is the responsibility of the individual to train their nose, study their botany, read the labels, know their suppliers, and truly understand their oils to determine and ensure that what they use are in fact real, authentic, whole, unaltered therapeutic  essential oils.

Hydrosols, even more than essential oils, require great care after production. As they do not contain many of the antibacterial and non-water-soluble chemicals we find in oils, they have less natural preservative inherent in their makeup. Many of the distillers who keep their hydrosols instead of letting them run down the drain or into the field simply pour the waters into containers and put them on the shelf. The waters are not filtered, nor are the containers sterilized before filling hydrosols come of the still quite slowly, and it can take many hours to fill a receptacle with hydrosol. 

During this time anything from bits of plant material to dust and insects can get into the vat. One company that sells over two tons of rose hydrosol per year recently told me they have even found gravel in their hydrosols during filtering. What of adulterants? We know about adulteration of oils, but who would adulterate water? Unfortunately the practice is not uncommon. Water is the most obvious adulterant used, since we're talking about water anyway, but diluting a hydrosol with plain or distilled water not only dilutes its effects but drastically shortens its life span.

Alcohol is another common adulterant of hydrosols. Alcohol, like water is undetectable by smell if it is low-enough concentrations, and it increases volume as well. But alcohol does not cost money and is mainly added as a preservative, greatly increasing a hydrosols shelf life by killing organisms and bacteria that may be present.

In countries o0f the European Union, hydrosols that are sold for cosmetic/aesthetic purposes must now by law contain alcohol, a minimum of 12 per cent volume. The fact that this renders the hydrosol almost useless for cosmetic purposes, since true hydrosols are alcohol free options for skin care, did not seem to influence the lawmakers .

However, the alcohol has been effective in preventing contamination and lengthening shelf life, even allowing hydrosols to be safely kept at room temperature in retail stores with no worry of spoilage-but more on this later.

Reference: Hydrosols The New Aromatherapy : Suzanne Catty