The cut without the safrole.

Our Story

Crude camphor oil is split into fractions and they are not equivalent. One of them carries safrole. Ours is the one that does not, and there is a number for it.

White Fraction, Nothing Else

Safrole Figure On Every Lot

China Distilled and Split

2 yr Tightly Closed

White, Brown, and the One To Avoid

Camphor wood does not yield a single oil. Steam takes off a crude distillate, that crude is split by boiling point into fractions, and the fractions are genuinely different materials sold under one name.

The light cut is white camphor, and it is the one used for fragrance and craft work. The heavier brown and yellow cuts are where safrole concentrates. Safrole is classified as a carcinogen and is a controlled substance in several jurisdictions, which is precisely why the fraction matters more here than the species does.

So the word white on a label is not a description of colour. It is a claim about which cut somebody bought, and it is a claim that can be checked. A safrole result at or below the limit of detection is the difference between a claim and a fact.

We ask for that number on every lot, because it is the only part of this product's description that carries any real risk if it is wrong.

Pale camphor wood chips heaped beside a dish of white crystalline camphor

Split In China, Where the Capacity Is

Ours is distilled and fractionated in China, which produces the great majority of natural camphor and its fractions from Cinnamomum camphora. That is simply where the trade lives now.

Japan and Taiwan were the historic centres and both are minor today, whatever the romance of old apothecary labels suggests. Vietnam contributes some. We would rather name the country that actually made the material than the one with the better story.

The producer is named on file against your lot, alongside the specification we bought against.

A Tower Running Continuously

Fractionation is not a second pass through a still. It is continuous vacuum distillation in a tower, taking cuts off at different heights and holding each one to a temperature band, operated by a small number of houses with the plant to do it.

That is an industrial capability and we do not have it. What we bring is the choosing and the checking: which house, against what specification, verified on arrival before any of it is bottled.

It also explains why fractions are consistent in a way a whole oil never is. The column decides the composition, so a good lot this year resembles a good lot last year.

$A bank of fractionating columns with condensers and vacuum lines at a processing plant$

The Figure That Proves the Fraction

Three things asked of every lot, one of which matters more than the rest combined.

Safrole, at or below detection

The result that separates a white fraction from a heavier cut sold as one. We want the figure, not an assurance that the fraction was correct.

Camphor content and profile

Confirms the cut sits where white camphor sits, with the 1,8-cineole and terpene picture the fraction should show.

Identity and origin

Cinnamomum camphora wood distillate, tied to the producing house rather than averaged into a country of shipment.

Results follow the lot and reach you when you ask. Nothing is displayed here for browsing, because a certificate on a website has no connection to the bottle in your hand.

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Amber Glass

All sizes in dark glass with a tight closure, since this one evaporates readily.

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White Fraction Only

No blending with heavier cuts, no carrier, no dilution behind the label.

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Producer On File

Chinese origin and the house that ran the column, held against the lot.

Camphor Is Genuinely Hazardous

This is the most direct warning on any page in this network, and it is here because it is warranted. Camphor is neurotoxic in quantity. It is contraindicated for infants and young children, and topical application near a small child's face has caused serious harm. Anyone with a history of seizures should avoid it, since camphor can lower the seizure threshold.

It is never taken internally. Small volumes are dangerous to a child who swallows them, and any ingestion should be treated as an emergency rather than watched. Keep the bottle somewhere a child cannot reach, not merely somewhere out of sight.

Used sensibly it is a superb fragrance material: dilute hard, work in ventilated space, and measure in drops. Two years tightly closed, and it may crystallise or go semi-solid in the cold, which gentle warming reverses. Store it away from heat and oxidisers. We make no medical claims for it in either direction.

The Right Cut, With the Number To Show It

White fraction from Cinnamomum camphora, distilled and split in China by a named house, bought to specification and carrying a safrole result on every lot.

Handled with respect, it is unmatched.

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