Pseudoscience: Essential oils

Four essential oils: tarragon, apricot seed, lemon, and mandarin

One of my favourite laboratory exercises from my undergraduate chemistry days was extracting an essential oil by steam distillation, and then analysing it using infrared spectroscopy and other methods. Knowing something about essential oils, I was rather surprised to read this on the Internet recently:

“Bruce Tanio, of Tainio Technology and head of the Department of Agriculture at Eastern Washington University, has developed a Calibrated Frequency Monitor (CFM) that has been used to measure the frequencies of essential oils and their effect on human frequencies when applied to the body. Therapeutic Grade Essential Oils begin at 52 and go as high as 320 MHz. For example: Rose 320 MHz, Helichrysum 181 MHz, Frankincense 147 MHz, Ravensara 134 MHz, Lavender 118 MHz, Myrrh 105 MHz, German Camomile 105 MHz, Juniper 98 MHz, Sandalwood 96 MHz, Angelica 85 MHz, Peppermint 78 MHz.”

“A healthy body, from head to foot, typically has a frequency ranging from 62 to 78 MHz, while disease begins at 58MHz. During some testing with frequency and the frequency of essential oils it was measured that: Holding a cup of coffee dropped one man’s frequency from 66 MHz to 58 MHz in just 3 seconds. It took three days for his frequency to return to normal. Another man drank the coffee and his frequency dropped from 66 MHz to 52 MHz. After inhaling the pure therapeutic grade essential oil, his frequency returned to 66 MHz in just 21 seconds.”

“In another case: A man’s frequency dropped from 65 MHz to 48 MHz when he simply held a cigarette. When he smoked the cigarette, his frequency dropped to 42 MHz, the same frequency as cancer. Other studies show that: Negative thoughts lower our frequency on average 12 MHz. Positive thoughts raises our frequency on average 10 MHz.”

 
The oldest versions of these claims on the Internet seem to date from around the year 2000, and appear to have been systematically recopied and elaborated since then. They are generally associated with the false claim that essential oils can cure a range of diseases such as cancer and Ebola, which of course they can not (in fact, used inappropriately, essential oils can be quite dangerous).

All the stuff about frequencies is of course complete nonsense – human bodies and essential oils do not in fact have characteristic frequencies, nor do they broadcast radio waves in the VHF (30–300 MHz) band, nor is there any association between frequency and disease (individual chemical bonds within molecules have characteristic frequencies, in the infrared or visible-light range, but that is not what is being discussed here). Scientific words are being used here in a nonsensical way, in an attempt to give credibility to the associated medical claims. The link to Eastern Washington University is being used in the same way. In fact, Eastern Washington University does not even have a Department of Agriculture (so that the late Bruce Tainio could not have headed it), nor is the company founded by Tainio mentioned on the university’s web site at all. But yet, inexplicably, people seem to believe this stuff. Why?

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