Know Your Incense – 2

Use of Charcoal for burning Incense:

The earliest known incense were made of natural materials completely. People used herbs, Barks, Resins and oils – all natural, all grown by them or found in the wild. The Incense Stick as we know of it now is a later day derivative.

Most of the natural ingredients used were fragrant and would emanate scent into the air when burned. Other than for spiritual reasons and personal hygiene, Incense were burned to keep away pests and insects too. The ingredients used for burning were considered quite valuable – how can one forget that two of the three gifts that the Magi carried for Jesus Christ on his birth were Frankincense and Myrrh?
It must have been much later when humans started producing incense for trade that the modern version of sticks were made. Addition of other ingredients, to enhance the quality of their fragrance, bind, combustion and dispersion of the scent into the air, must have happened then. Later day knowledge of making a paste of the ingredients, rolling them over a stick and drying them to be burned later might have helped them to easily stock, store, trade/exchange these goods.
Charcoal as a combustion agent was one of such later additions into the recipe of Incense making.
The problems with inhaling charcoal fumes, especially in enclosed spaces, is two-fold. One it affects the health and the second is the way it depletes our environment of its natural fossil. Mining and production of charcoal, the effects of burning charcoal and the particulates of a burning incense in air is an ongoing study and a debatable topic. However, it is not untrue that Lung and Respiratory tract issues are quite often associated with inhalation of Carbon Monoxide.

Choose wise, go natural –
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