Pine tar along with many other ingredients due to a lack of proof of their effectiveness. Some pine tar products contain creosote, a probable carcinogen. Creosote potentially may be produced when the pine wood is heated up to high temperatures in the creation of pine tar. Pine tar is also used in veterinary medicine as an expectorant and an antiseptic in chronic skin conditions. Pine tar Pine tar is a sticky material produced by the high temperature carbonization of pine wood in anoxic conditions (dry distillation or destructive distillation). The wood is rapidly decomposed by applying heat and pressure in a closed
English words of Greek origin "bacterium" < βακτήριον 'stick (diminutive)' is a kind of microorganism rather than a small stick or staff. This also applies to combining forms used in neologisms: "-cyte" or "cyto-" < κύτος 'container' means biological cells, not arbitrary containers; "-oma" < -ωμα, a generic morpheme forming deverbal nouns such as "diploma" 'a folded thing' and "glaucoma" 'greyness', comes to have the very narrow meaning of 'tumor' or 'swelling', on the model of words like "carcinoma" < καρκίνωμα. For example, "melanoma" does not come from Greek μελάνωμα 'blackness', but rather from the modern combining forms "melano-" 'dark (in biology)' + "-oma" 'tumor'.