What is the difference between essential oils and fragrances?

A common question for aromatherapists is: What is the difference between essential oils and fragrances?


In fact, there is no mandatory regulation in the regulations, which leads to many fragrances on the market that are said to be essential oils, and essential oils are said to be fragrances. And let me introduce you to aromatherapy essential oils and fragrances.


It is a natural plant essence obtained through various extraction methods using natural plants and resins as raw materials. It is also an essential oil that traditional aromatherapy believes to have overall healing properties.


It can be called standardized essential oil, which is based on essential oil to make changes in composition. In Germany and France, since essential oils have been listed in the Pharmacopoeia, and there are legal requirements for the proportion of monomer components, the essential oils that are easily affected by the terroir environment and the proportion of components fluctuate, must be added with monomer essences to meet the regulatory ratio.


Just imagine, in the real lavender known for its relaxing effect, add the linalool monomer extracted from the boosting linalool essential oil, or even artificially synthesized linalool, is this... is it still a real lavender for relaxation?


Also known as fractionated essential oil, de-photosensitive bergamot essential oil and Bailing oil (peppermint essential oil) can be said to be representatives. The former excludes the vapor of photosensitive furocoumarin during the distillation and extraction process; the latter is through Three times of distillation, the natural high proportion of menthol (l-Menthol) is extracted.


In fact, furanocoumarin also has its aromatherapy effect. Unfractionated essential oils have a richer odor because of their diverse components.


Natural monomer essence: There are many monomer components in essential oils, many monomers have their own aroma characteristics, and individual extracts can be used as fragrance.


Synthetic Monomer Fragrance: Monomers with aroma are produced by chemical synthesis.


Natural compound essence: There are as many as 300 monomeric molecules in rose essential oil, but the main odor is constructed. As long as more than ten kinds of monomers can imitate 90% of the aroma, or use some essential oils with similar aromas as the base to deploy, such as rose Geranium, Palmarosa, are often used to create rose aroma.


Synthetic Compound Fragrance: The perfume industry has unlimited creativity. Ocean, white musk, watermelon, various flowers, violet, lily, lily of the valley, rose, jasmine and sweet-scented osmanthus... These can all be combined into fragrances through chemical synthesis of monomers.


Fragrances usually contain fixatives, and poor-quality fragrances or perfumes even use some monomers with environmental hormonal properties, such as the plasticizer diethyl phthalate (DEP, Diethyl phthalate).