New woody and ambery notes from cedarwood and turpentine oil.

The development of a new product in the chemical industry is still driven by needs like technical properties, price/performance ratio, biodegradability, or product safety. However, in terms of improving more and more on ecological criteria, summarized under such catchphrases as sustainable development or green chemistry, another important aspect is to use renewable resources as starting materials. This is not significantly new in fragrance chemistry, and there are a lot of raw materials in the perfume oils that are derived from molecules of renewable resources. Two commonly used materials are: longifolene (from turpentine oil) and cedrene (from cedarwood oil). These compounds are very suitable for the synthesis of woody and ambery notes, and even though it seemed that all possibilities were exhausted, it is actually still feasible to discover new molecules with excellent olfactory properties such as Ambrocenide (50a), which is available in three steps from alpha-cedrene. Some of these molecules will be treated in this review, both with respect to synthesis as well as structural and sensory aspects.

GC-MS characterisation and identification of natural terpenic resins employed in works of art.

Natural resins were frequently employed in the past as adhesives or as components of oleo-resinous media in paintings. The identification of vegetable resins is still an open problem. The aim of this paper is to analyse by GC-MS some vegetable resins frequently employed in paintings, such as Venice turpentine, dammar, copal, elemi, in order to identify their main components in samples both raw and aged. Some molecules are proposed as chemical markers to identify these natural resins. Two samples scraped off from XV and XVII century paintings were used to test the reliability of proposed method.

Chrysanthemum allergy. Pt. II: Experimental studies on the causative agents. / Chrysantemen-Allergie. 2. Experimentelle Untersuchungen zur Identifizierung der Allergene

Experimental studies on allergic contact dermatitis due to Chrysanthemum indicum 1. (Chrysanthemum x-morifolium) (chrysanthemum of the florists) have indicated the following results: 1. In 5 patients with allergic contact dermatitis from chrysanthemum oil of turpentine and its sensitizing compounds gave no patch test responses. No relationship between contact allergy due to chrysanthemus and to turpentine oil could be determined. 2. The pyrethrins, constituents with insecticidal activity, derived from certain Chrysanthemum species and often suspected as the causative agents, play no role in chrysanthemum allergy. 3. Tests on sensitized guinea pigs (pirl bright white strain) with flowers of chrysanthemum as well as with the two sesquiterpene lactones parthenolide and alantolactone, derived from different Composite species, gave positive patch test reactions. The results showed that parthenolide produced stronger reactions than alantolactone. 4. By thin layer chromatography neither parthenolide, nor alantolactone or pyrethrosin could be detected in extracts of chrysanthemum flowers of the florists. But the investigations indicated that several other terpenic compounds are present, which gave positive color reactions to certain lactone reagents. Five of them showed strong positive patch test reactions in our patients as well as in sensitized guinea pigs. Further studies are required to identify these compounds.