Petrolatum: Conditioning Through Occlusion
Randy Schueller, Perry Romanowski in Conditioning Agents for Hair and Skin, 2020
Having been known for thousands of years, crude petroleum (crude oil) has a varied and extensive history (1-5). It is believed to have been found, while drilling for salt, by the Chinese, who used the material in ca. 1700 B.C. for lighting. Asphalt and other heavy, nonvolatile fractions of petroleum (such as bitumen and pitch) were used more often and in earlier times, since these materials do not evaporate with age as do the more volatile components of petroleum used in lighting and as fuels. These heavy materials are thought to have been used as mortar and in other adhesive applications from before ca. 2200 B.C. to at least the second century B.C. by the Assyrians and Babylonians. Not surprisingly, much of the archeologicai evidence of asphalt use has been discovered in the region of southern Mesopotamia ("the cradle of civilization") between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, as well as in ancient Persia. In addition to being employed for these purposes, asphalt was used around 1000 B.C. by the Egyptians in some of their mummification procedures, as a protective material and to fill body cavities.
Materia medica
Michael Stolberg in Gabrielle Falloppia, 1522/23–1562, 2023
This raised the question of the material cause of this fire, of the substrate or fuel that maintained it. Democritus’ explanation that the heat came from lime and ashes might seem plausible, at first glance, Falloppia argued. Both substances were often found in the vicinity of thermal springs and experience showed that intense heat developed when lime was mixed with cold water. This heat was only momentary, however. There had to be another explanation. According to the (Pseudo-)Aristotelian Problemata, the fire in the earth’s interior was maintained by burning sulfur, while Georg Agricola identified bitumen as its fuel.59 Falloppia combined both positions: many large and small fires burned beneath the earth, some fueled by sulfur, others by bitumen, and others again by both. Of course, the sulfur and the bitumen were consumed with time but experience showed that the earth constantly generated new sulfur and bitumen: when a sulfur mine was not used for a couple of years, the miners would find it full of sulfur again when they returned. The same was true for bitumen, as could be seen in the area around Modena.60
Monographs of Topical Drugs that Have Caused Contact Allergy/Allergic Contact Dermatitis
Anton C. de Groot in Monographs in Contact Allergy, 2021
Coal tar was responsible for 1 out of 399 cases of cosmetic allergy where the causal allergen was identified in a study of the NACDG, USA, 1977-1983 (1). Another case of non-pharmaceutical contact allergy to coal tar was a woman who became sensitized to the printing ink in newspapers. Such inks may contain 5% asphaltic material to produce a top quality, high-speed production ink. Asphalt or bitumen is the bottom residue obtained from the distillation of crude coal tar (26).
Assessing cancer hazards of bitumen emissions – a case study for complex petroleum substances
Published in Critical Reviews in Toxicology, 2018
Anthony J. Kriech, Ceinwen A. Schreiner, Linda V. Osborn, Anthony J. Riley
The product, bitumen, is used in many ways due to its engineering properties for building roads, waterproofing roofs and in hydraulic applications such as pond liners. Bitumen is a non-distillable residuum obtained from the distillation of suitable crude oils (Asphalt Institute, Eurobitume 2015). The distillation process normally involves atmospheric distillation followed by either vacuum distillation or steam distillation. Additional processing, such as air oxidation, solvent stripping or blending of petroleum residua of different stiffness characteristics, may be needed to form a material whose physical properties meet the technical requirements for commercial applications.
Related Knowledge Centers
- Coal Tar
- Distillation
- Fractional Distillation
- Naphtha
- Naphthalene
- Petroleum
- Pyrolysis
- Pitch
- Tar
- Bergius Process