Using Essential Oils in the Classroom
As essential oil use in the classroom becomes more common, many questions have been raised about the effectiveness and safety of this application.
Why are essential oils used in a classroom?
Essential oils are typically used in the classroom to achieve one (or both) of two different goals:
- Medicinal Purposes. These include diffusing the oils into a classroom for health-related outcomes, including preventing the spread of illness (typically winter upper respiratory infections), enhancing memory for students during test-taking, and improving concentration by calming children.
- Environmental Health. These include using essential oil-based cleaning products after hours to clean the building and to freshen the air in a hallway or bathroom. In this scenario, essential oil-based products replace commercial products which may contain ingredients which are potentially harmful to child development.
Is it safe to use oils in the classroom?
When oils are used in the classroom, administration factors such as oil selection, dose, and duration are typically determined by the teacher. Unlike the administration of other medical products in a school setting, the use of essential oils for medicinal purposes typically takes place without consideration for health history of each student in the class and in many cases, without parental consent.
The widespread use of essential oils in the classroom raises many questions regarding the safety and effectiveness of essential oil administration to large numbers of children by a non-medical professional, without parental consent.
Can essential oils help kids succeed?
Setting aside the legal concerns regarding widespread treatment of children without medical expertise or parental consent, let’s dig deeper and see if these oils achieve their stated purposes. After all, the health-related purposes of using essential oils in the classroom are based on several key assumptions, one in particular being that diffusing oils into a classroom full of children is an effective way to achieve these goals. Here’s what the science says:
Memory
The Goal: Diffusing essential oils in the classroom will enhance memory, boosting test scores.
The Outcome: Oils do have an effect on cognitive functioning, and there are studies indicating that specific oils may act in specific ways that can boost academic performance. However, benefits are varied, depending on the outcome of interest.
Oils which reduce stress in test-taking may boost accuracy while also lengthening total processing speed (Moss et al., 2003; Filiptsova et al., 2017). Similarly, oils which are calming to excitable children both lengthen processing speed and negatively affect memory (Moss et al., 2008).
Essential oils typically boost academic performance by calming the central nervous system (CNS) to reduce overall test-taking anxiety. The result of this influence on the brain is that it enables the student to think through answers more clearly and improve accuracy. However, improving accuracy in this way requires more time to think through each problem or question.
This calming of the CNS may also inhibit the child’s memory recall, preventing them from accessing stored information in the brain. In short, by reducing stress and calming the CNS, the administration of essential oils is likely to reduce academic performance.
Furthermore, some essential oils can enhance test scores in one subject while reducing them in another subject. For example, an essential oil may increase concentration in composition while reducing math scores (Sakamoto et al., 2005; Ludvigsson & Rottman, 1989; Liu et al., 2004).
Ultimately, administering substances which have the ability to influence a child’s nervous system and memory processing without advanced training in the subject matter will result in questionable success. Effective treatments for a child’s memory should be both subject-specific and child-specific, taking into consideration a child’s health history. Teachers and administrators who diffuse oils with the intention of influencing brain activity may unintentionally be restricting a child from achieving his or her full academic potential.
Hyperactivity
The Objective: Diffusing oils in the classroom will calm children with ADHD, boosting concentration and reducing excitability or hyperactivity.
The Outcome: Treating a child’s known or suspected medical condition in a classroom may negatively impact outcomes and places the child at risk.
This medical application of essential oils relies on the belief that when a classroom full of children inhale specific essential oils, these oils will calm their central nervous system and either reduce classroom distractions and behavioral concerns or boost academic outcomes–or both.
This approach is rooted in an outdated view of the way in which a child’s brain functions. A child who is sitting still at a desk is not the same thing as a high performing child. According to the scientific literature, oils which help to calm a child’s hyperactivity increase processing speed and reduce accuracy (Sakamoto et al., 2005; Ludvigsson & Rottman, 1989; Liu et al., 2004). In other words, these oils may influence a child’s behavior and encourage them to comply with instructions, but they achieve this goal at the expense of academic achievement.
Self-treating a child’s hyperactivity also places the children in a classroom at risk. Oils which influence brain activity may interact with pharmaceuticals which are taken by students in the classroom. These interactions could reduce the treatment efficacy of the treatments prescribed by a child’s medical provider or they could enhance the actions of those medications, placing the child at risk of an adverse event. Without an awareness of the health history of each child, teachers, administrators, or room parents who self-treat hyperactivity may unintentionally harm students.
Preventing the Spread of Illnesses
The Objective: Diffusing essential oils in the classroom will eliminate airborne pathogens, preventing and treating winter illnesses.
The Outcome: Despite extensive research on the antimicrobial abilities of oils, there is no evidence that safe levels of essential oils deactivate airborne viruses. While oils may deactivate viruses when applied to air filters or in cleaning products with direct exposure (reaching the minimum inhibitory concentration), such results have not been found from the use of essential oil diffusers in concentrations which would be safe for children (Pyankov et al., 2012).
There is no evidence in the scientific literature that essential oils diffused in the classroom reduce the incidence of a cold or flu or reduce the total number of sick days students experience. While anecdotal stories of essential oil diffusion producing healthier classrooms exist, these outcomes are better attributed to an overall focus on prevention, including hand washing and germ awareness than to essential oil diffusion.
While some essential oils can be used medicinally to prevent and treat illness when ingested or applied topically, they are not effective for this purpose when inhaled from a diffuser in child-safe doses. There is, however, evidence that diffusion of these oils in the classroom has the potential to harm students.
When used to address infectious microbes, essential oils have been found to be the most effective at killing airborne bacteria in high concentrations over short periods of time (Inouye et al., 2001). Bacteria, however, are not responsible for the majority of winter infections that are known to spread in a classroom, including the flu and common cold.
Furthermore, to achieve inhibition of bacterial growth, most oils require minimum concentrations in the air which far exceed safe upper limits for pediatric inhalation and many studies use oils which are inadvisable for young children in medicinal doses (Doran et al., 2009). Regardless of the type of microbe targeted, to achieve the purpose of reducing airborne pathogens, essential oils must be diffused in concentrations which are known to be unsafe for children.
Should Essential Oils be Used in the Classroom?
Diffusing essential oils in the classroom is not only ineffective, there are documented risks in the scientific research that may suggest that it could be dangerous. Diffusion for long periods of time results in headaches, loss of concentration, and even hospitalization. In a school setting in the midwest, an entire classroom of children were sent to the hospital due to reactions to oil use.
Children who have asthma, allergies, and seizure disorders are at an increased risk of adverse reactions from essential oil administration. Regular diffusion of essential oils in the classroom can lead to lower test scores, particularly in math.
Without education and training in the administration of essential oils to other individuals, teachers are not qualified to dispense these substances to children in their care. Pound for pound, children breathe in more air than adults, so the dose they receive is greater than the dose the teacher can detect. Without training in how to determine safe doses for administration through inhalation, the teacher places the children at risk.
REFRENCES
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Chuang, K. J., Chen, H. W., Liu, I. J., Chuang, H. C., & Lin, L. Y. (2014). The effect of essential oil on heart rate and blood pressure among solus por aqua workers. European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, 21(7), 823-828.
Doran, A. L., Morden, W. E., Dunn, K., & Edwards‐Jones, V. (2009). Vapour–phase activities of essential oils against antibiotic sensitive and resistant bacteria including MRSA. Letters in Applied Microbiology, 48(4), 387-392.
Filiptsova, O. V., Gazzavi-Rogozina, L. V., Timoshyna, I. A., Naboka, O. I., Dyomina, Y. V., & Ochkur, A. V. (2017). The effect of the essential oils of lavender and rosemary on the human short-term memory. Alexandria Journal of Medicine.
Inouye, S., Takizawa, T., & Yamaguchi, H. (2001). Antibacterial activity of essential oils and their major constituents against respiratory tract pathogens by gaseous contact. Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, 47(5), 565-573.
Liu, M., Mattson, R. H., & Kim, E. (2004). Influences of lavender fragrance and cut flower arrangements on cognitive performance. International Journal of Aromatherapy, 14(4), 169-174.
Ludvigson, H. W., & Rottman, T. R. (1989). Effects of ambient odors of lavender and cloves on cognition, memory, affect and mood. Chemical Senses, 14(4), 525-536.
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Moss, M., Hewitt, S., Moss, L., & Wesnes, K. (2008). Modulation of cognitive performance and mood by aromas of peppermint and ylang-ylang. International Journal of Neuroscience, 118(1), 59-77.
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Sakamoto, R., Minoura, K., Usui, A., Ishizuka, Y., & Kanba, S. (2005). Effectiveness of aroma on work efficiency: lavender aroma during recesses prevents deterioration of work performance. Chemical Senses, 30(8), 683-691.
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