Tar, pitch, and asphalt

Factual Questions
1

Talking with my dad while at work (father and officemate; it’s a scary situation.) He was delivering one of his usual lectures on my smoking, and mentioned tar. Now, I understand that the tar in cigarettes is a substance with approximately the same consistency as tar, and I was wondering if it was chemically similar, and we got to trying to figure out exactly where tar comes from.

Are “tar” and “coal tar” synonyms? Coal tar comes from the production of coke from coal. I’m familiar with it mostly as a source of material for medicines, dyes, etc, and references to it always describe it as “coal tar”, making me wonder if it’s a different substance.

What about the tar pits? What is the “tar” that they’re filled with? Is it related to petroleum? Do we get the tar we use to patch parking lots out of tar pits?

What’s pitch? Where to we get asphalt? Are these things the same as tar, or are they derived from them? Which of these things is in shingles and tar paper? And cigarette tar: how similar is it to the tar on the road, chemically speaking? Can other plants be burned to produce tar?

Urk . . . this turned out to be a more complex issue than I figured, or else I have a gross lack of knowledge of the world immediately around me.

2

Great question. This linked looked hopeful

http://www.normas.com/AI/pages/RR-78-1.html

… but it’s for a $42 report on the subject! Yikes!

3

per wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphalt

tar is derived from destructive ditillation, asphalt from fractional distillation; tar can come from coal, petroleum, wood, or peat (and, I would guess, tobacco leaves … can find a definite statement anywhere that cigarette tar = other types of tar)

4

Ever bought a bag of weed, and smoked it in your pipe, and when the bag of weed was gone, there was all this black gunk in the innards of your pipe? If the pipe was designed poorly, it would clog up the works and make it hard to draw through? And if the pipe was easy to take apart, you could scrape out and collect all that black gunk and put it on some tobacco and get one last buzz outta your bag?

That’s the “tar” they’re talking about. It’s partially burned resins and oils from the vegetable matter, and it vaporizes and then condenses… not only on the cool parts of the pipe, but also in your lungs.

That’s why “low tar” is touted as a “safer” cigarette. Less gunk to condense in your alveoli.