Perfume and Flavor Materials of Natural Origin, page 323.
Peru balsam is a dark brown, viscous but pourable liquid. It is transparent and appears reddish-brown in color when spread in thin layers.
Peru balsam is almost entirely soluble in perfume alcohol, but only partly soluble in petroleum ether or other hydrocarbons. Chlorinated hydrocarbon solvents (methylene dichloride, trichloroethylene, etc.) are, however, good solvents for Peru balsam.
The odor is the typical balsamic one: rich, sweet, cinnamic-benzoic, soft and very tenacious, showing an increasing vanillin-like note on drying out.
The flavor of the balsam is persistently bitter, warm and biting, not at all as suave or pleasant as its odor.
Peru Balsam is often used as such in perfumery since the natural resins act as good fixatives. However, the very dark color of the natural product is a disadvantage in many cases.
The exudation is collected in a very crude manner, and is only coarsely purified locally by treatment with boiling water. In order to increase the yield of balsam, the native collectors use knives, hatchets or even blowtorches on the bark and the lacerated trunk.
| Category | Kind | Max % | Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category 1 | Max % | 0.073% | — | DOC |
| Category 2 | Max % | 0.022% | — | DOC |
| Category 3 | Max % | 0.44% | — | DOC |
| Category 4 | Max % | 0.41% | — | DOC |
| Category 5A | Max % | 0.1% | — | DOC |
| Category 5B | Max % | 0.1% | — | DOC |
| Category 5C | Max % | 0.1% | — | DOC |
| Category 5D | Max % | 0.034% | — | DOC |
| Category 6 | Max % | 0.24% | — | DOC |
| Category 7A | Max % | 0.83% | — | DOC |
| Category 7B | Max % | 0.83% | — | DOC |
| Category 8 | Max % | 0.034% | — | DOC |
| Category 9 | Max % | 0.8% | — | DOC |
| Category 10A | Max % | 0.8% | — | DOC |
| Category 10B | Max % | 2.9% | — | DOC |
| Category 11A | Max % | 0.034% | — | DOC |
| Category 11B | Max % | 0.034% | — | DOC |
| Category 12 | No restriction | — | No Restriction | DOC |
Compliance-support only. Values resolved from the current IFRA corpus; each row cites the document excerpt it came from. Not a substitute for a qualified safety assessor.
Restricted IFRA-standard materials typically present in this NCS at the listed concentrations.
| Constituent | CAS | Typical % |
|---|---|---|
| Benzyl benzoate | 120-51-4 | 54% |
| Benzyl Cinnamate | 103-41-3 | 15.2% |
| Benzyl Alcohol | 100-51-6 | 0.9% |
| Benzaldehyde | 100-52-7 | 0.03% |
| Coumarin | 91-64-5 | 0.03% |
| Eugenol | 97-53-0 | 0.03% |
| Isoeugenol | 97-54-1 | 0.03% |