« Back to Farmacia Journal 6/2016

QUALITATIVE ASSAY OF ESSENTIAL OILS OF LAVENDER AND PEPPERMINT IN COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS THROUGH SPECTRAL AND CHROMATOGRAPHIC METHODS

SILVIA IMRE¹, SIGRID EŞIANU¹, AMALIA MIKLOS^1*, IOANA TIUCA², IONELA DICHER¹, AMELIA TERO-VESCAN¹, DANIELA-LUCIA MUNTEAN¹, RADU OPREAN²

Download Full Article PDF

Essential oils are largely employed for their therapeutic properties, being marketed extensively in pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry. The aim of our study was to assess the purity and quality of peppermint and lavender volatile oils, available on the market, from various commercial producers. The methods used for testing the quality of these oils were refractometry, polarimetry, thin layer and gas chromatography, which are official techniques in Pharmacopoeia monographies of essential oils, and IR spectrometry, a non-official one. Following the analytical results, not all samples proved to be of excellent quality and high purity, some of them being contaminated with other substances or even diluted. Gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry and IR spectrometry methods had proved effective in assessing without doubt the qualitative difference between samples, the other techniques remaining a fast alternative, although there are limitations in terms of specificity and sensitivity.