Look up an online remedy for asthma, pink eye, or ear infections and chances are now you'll find safer ways to relieve what ails you.
The grassroots action group SPARTA, "Specialized Plant Aromatherapy Reports on Truth in Advertising", launched last month with one goal in their sights - to reduce the amount of unsafe essential oil use recommendations found online. Essential oils are the concentrated, potent aromatic oils able to be extracted from some plants, which are used industrially for scent, flavor, and solvency, following guidelines established by industry safety organizations.
Due to aggressive marketing campaigns by sales companies who feature essential oils as their major money maker, the amount of unsafe ways to use, and use up, your essential oil supply had avalanched across the online landscape, especially on websites popular with stay-at-home moms like Facebook and Pinterest. With unverified disease cure claims, undiluted and internal use instructions, "make over your medicine cabinet with essential oils" parties, and risky use instructions for children, pregnant women, and the elderly, concerned citizens decided it was time for this information to go.
"SPARTA was born from a solid understanding of the manipulative marketing techniques being used by direct sales companies to convince you to use EOs in unsafe ways to use up product and make more money for a multi-million dollar corporation.' Explains herbalist Lee Tea, founder and administrator of the SPARTA campaign. "In May, SPARTA launched with the primary goal of reducing the amount of unsafe use recommendations promoted online by essential oil sales companies by using current legislation as a tool to discourage its presence. After only a month of SPARTA, reps are begrudgingly pulling or hiding their non-compliant info and, as very intentionally planned, a lot of the unsafe information with it."
"We're not the first people to report non-compliant essential oil information to discourage this unsafe information, but we're the first I know of to quantify and publicly post the amount of reports we were filing directly to compliance officers at the FDA." says Ms. Tea. "I think that had a real impact on how quickly this information started to disappear."
So what does this mean for the essential oils industry? With safer use instructions online for laypeople, it appears it will increase the popularity of using essential oils safely at home for general uses like pleasant scents, cleaning and sanitizing, and bug sprays. And with sales reps untrained in aromatic medicine no longer teaching people to use essential oils for every ailment that has a name, it seems it will protect the integrity of qualified aromatherapists who are sought out to help with such issues as a matter of complimentary medicine, along with consultation from your medical doctor.
For more on the SPARTA campaign, visit their website at SPARTAcampaign.weebly.com
The grassroots action group SPARTA, "Specialized Plant Aromatherapy Reports on Truth in Advertising", launched last month with one goal in their sights - to reduce the amount of unsafe essential oil use recommendations found online. Essential oils are the concentrated, potent aromatic oils able to be extracted from some plants, which are used industrially for scent, flavor, and solvency, following guidelines established by industry safety organizations.
Due to aggressive marketing campaigns by sales companies who feature essential oils as their major money maker, the amount of unsafe ways to use, and use up, your essential oil supply had avalanched across the online landscape, especially on websites popular with stay-at-home moms like Facebook and Pinterest. With unverified disease cure claims, undiluted and internal use instructions, "make over your medicine cabinet with essential oils" parties, and risky use instructions for children, pregnant women, and the elderly, concerned citizens decided it was time for this information to go.
"SPARTA was born from a solid understanding of the manipulative marketing techniques being used by direct sales companies to convince you to use EOs in unsafe ways to use up product and make more money for a multi-million dollar corporation.' Explains herbalist Lee Tea, founder and administrator of the SPARTA campaign. "In May, SPARTA launched with the primary goal of reducing the amount of unsafe use recommendations promoted online by essential oil sales companies by using current legislation as a tool to discourage its presence. After only a month of SPARTA, reps are begrudgingly pulling or hiding their non-compliant info and, as very intentionally planned, a lot of the unsafe information with it."
"We're not the first people to report non-compliant essential oil information to discourage this unsafe information, but we're the first I know of to quantify and publicly post the amount of reports we were filing directly to compliance officers at the FDA." says Ms. Tea. "I think that had a real impact on how quickly this information started to disappear."
So what does this mean for the essential oils industry? With safer use instructions online for laypeople, it appears it will increase the popularity of using essential oils safely at home for general uses like pleasant scents, cleaning and sanitizing, and bug sprays. And with sales reps untrained in aromatic medicine no longer teaching people to use essential oils for every ailment that has a name, it seems it will protect the integrity of qualified aromatherapists who are sought out to help with such issues as a matter of complimentary medicine, along with consultation from your medical doctor.
For more on the SPARTA campaign, visit their website at SPARTAcampaign.weebly.com