Material guide: pine oil — two entirely different manufacturing routes under one name, with the grade written into the product name

CAS 8002-09-3, 38 suppliers, assay 80.00 to 100.00. The TSCA definition calls it a product of "the high temperature distillation of oil of turpentine residues or by the catalytic hydration of pinenes" — two chemically unrelated routes sharing one name and one CAS. Supplier entries list PINE OIL 50%, 65% and 90% side by side, and the same database carries separate records for "pine oil 60" (assay 60 to 100) and "pine oil 85": the grade is in the product name. It is also one of the few records here with human toxicity data — of the 5,185 records with oral toxicity data, only 129 (2.5%) include a human figure.

About 5 minutes.

Short version

Name: pine oil, also dertol, CAS 8002-09-3
Category: fragrance agents (no FEMA number, fcc_listed reads No)
Odour type: herbal; odour: pine, herbal, woody, hay, green, terpenic, resinous
Substantivity: the field reads "16 Hour(s)" — with no concentration stated
Assay: 80.00 to 100.00
Suppliers: 38
Oral rat LD50 3200 mg/kg; oral human TDLo 4700 mg/kg

"Pine oil" is not a substance; it is a manufacturing category

The TSCA 2008 definition carried in the notes field is explicit:

extractives and their physically modified derivatives. a complex combination of terpenes produced by the high temperature distillation of oil of turpentine residues or by the catalytic hydration of pinenes. composed primarily of isomeric tertiary and secondary cyclic terpene alcohols. may contain terpene hydrocarbons…

Note the "or".

Those two routes are not the same thing chemically:

High-temperature distillation of turpentine residues — take what is left after turpentine has already been distilled and distil it again. What you get is a naturally derived residual composition.
Catalytic hydration of pinenes — take α-pinene, add water, and use a catalyst to convert it into terpene alcohols. That is a synthesis.

One is fractionating a natural; the other is running a reaction. They share a name and a CAS number.

(One CAS covering different things shows up database-wide as the 35.6% of shared-CAS groups that disagree even on odour type — A third of the records sharing a CAS. Pine oil is the manufacturing-route version of that problem.)

The grade is written into the product name

For most materials you have to hunt for the grade in the formulations field, and that field is filled in on only 1.7% of records.

With pine oil there is nothing to hunt for. The grade is in the name.

From the supplier entries carried in the solubility field:

PINE OIL 65% … PINE OIL MIN. 50% … PINE OIL MIN. 90% … PINE 65 … Pine Oil 50%

And the same database carries two further records:

Record	CAS	Suppliers	Assay
Pine oil	8002-09-3	38	80.00 to 100.00
Pine oil 85	94266-48-5	10	85.00 to 100.00
Pine oil 60	94266-48-5	6	60.00 to 100.00

The number in the name is the grade, and the assay range follows it. "Pine oil 60" is specified 60 to 100 — forty percentage points.

This is a different arrangement from the three causes I set out in the assay-range article: rather than distinguishing grades in the specification field, the grade is built into the product name. What you choose when buying is a product, not a range.

(Incidentally, pine oil 85 and pine oil 60 carry CAS 94266-48-5, different from the parent's 8002-09-3 — even the CAS numbers separate.)

That "16 hours" has no basis

The raw substantivity string is:

16 Hour(s)

No "at N%", no solvent.

In Who wrote the odour field I measured the two main describers' habits (Luebke states a concentration 99.2% of the time, Mosciano 26.2%). Substantivity is a different field, and on this record there is no basis at all.

So we do not know at what strength those 16 hours were measured. It cannot be compared directly against other materials' substantivity — though the numeric column invites you to.

It has human toxicity data, and that is rare

The toxicity_oral field carries two entries:

oral-rat LD50 3200 mg/kg (Food and Chemical Toxicology, 1983)

oral-man TDLo 4700 mg/kg: BEHAVIORAL: EXCITEMENT; BEHAVIORAL: ATAXIA; BEHAVIORAL: HEADACHE (Archives of Toxicology, 1981)

"oral-man" is uncommon in this database. Of the 5,185 records with oral toxicity data, only 129 (2.5%) include a human figure.

The best-supplied of those 129 are tea tree oil at 101 suppliers, acetic acid at 82, coumarin at 74, ortho-guaiacol at 61, hydrochloric acid at 48, and then pine oil at 38.

TDLo is the lowest published toxic dose, not an LD50. It records the lowest dose at which a toxic effect was observed, and the effects logged here are excitement, ataxia and headache.

The implication for formulation is limited — this is an ingestion dose, not a dermal one. But it does establish something: this material is used as a household-product feedstock, and that use generates human exposure data.

McKenzie and colleagues analysed household cleaning product injuries treated in US emergency departments between 1990 and 2006 in Pediatrics in 2010, and their product-category list includes "pine oil cleaners/disinfectants" alongside drain cleaners, ammonia, turpentine and dishwasher detergents.

This is not a perfumery context. I cite it to establish pine oil's principal identity: an industrial and household feedstock, of which perfumery is one use. It also explains why it has no FEMA number and reads fcc_listed: No.

How to use it

Read the number in the name when buying. 50%, 60%, 65%, 85% and 90% are different products.
It is a top-to-middle material. Sixteen hours (basis unknown), and the pine, terpenic and green in its odour field all point volatile.
The word "hay" is worth noticing. It sits in the odour field and is not the intuitive association with pine; it may come from the terpene-alcohol fraction.
No FEMA number, so keep it out of anything edible.
For a clean pine character, consider pine needle oil instead. The database's pine needle oil dwarf (12 suppliers) has odour type terpenic and is a different thing.

What this doesn't establish

I have not smelled it, and have not compared grades.
I have no data on whether the two manufacturing routes differ in odour. The TSCA definition allows both routes; it says nothing about whether the products differ.
I did not establish how "pine oil 60/85" relate to the parent record. Their CAS numbers differ (94266-48-5 versus 8002-09-3) while names and uses overlap, and the database does not explain the relationship.
The 16 hours has no stated basis, so it is not comparable with other materials' substantivity in this series.
TDLo is ingestion data and unrelated to dermal exposure from a perfume. I cite it because human data is rare in this database, not to infer any risk in use.
McKenzie's paper is injury epidemiology, not fragrance research. I quote only its product categories, to establish that pine oil's principal identity is a household-product feedstock.
I did not check the current IFRA standard for this oil.