Naftalan oil

Naftalan crude oil is too heavy for normal export uses (unlike Azerbaijan's plentiful Caspian Sea oil): it contains about 50 percent cycloalkanes (naphthenic hydrocarbons).

In Azerbaijan, people using the oil generally sit in a bath and are covered in oil up to their necks. There are numerous petroleum spas in the city of Naftalan itself. As a result, it has become a destination for health tourism.

History

Naftalan oil has been used since antiquity and was noted by Marco Polo. Its chemistry has been studied from the 1870s. Treatment centres were established in Azerbaijan and were visited by people from the Soviet Union. Its therapeutic effects have been studied since the 1890s.

After the oil boom at the turn of the 20th century, the Baku naftalan started to be extracted in higher volumes, and exported to Germany. After the borders were closed following the 1917 Russian Revolution, it fell into oblivion in the West. It still attracted some attention in the Soviet Union, when the Azerbaijan Medical University opened a small health resort that was in full operation by 1936. In the 1930s, academician T. G. Pashayev started to try to isolate naphthalan from industrial paraffin and naphthenic oils and proposed the term, though more current research indicates that the term "earth mineral oil" is more appropriate for what he described in his paper published in Moscow in 1959.

During the 20th century, a large number of academic papers were published by Soviet researchers about the topic. Nevertheless, in Europe the results from the Naphthalan Health Resort in Azerbaijan were largely rejected because the idea of the application of native oil to human subjects was not acceptable.

In the 1970s, the School of Medicine, University of Zagreb conducted its own research to compare the kinds of oil found near Baku and near Križ, Croatia. After two years, in 1978, they concluded that the oil they analyzed was not carcinogenic, after testing at INA labs and at the Ruđer Bošković Institute, and conducting a trial with 770 patients. In 1989 the Naftalan Special Hospital for Medical Rehabilitation was founded in Ivanić Grad. Their use of naphtalan oil is restricted to a refined distillate, devoid of tar, aromatic content and other undesired substances, in an effort to minimize the rate of contraindications and side effects. This hospital later conducted a 10-year follow-up and observation of 10,000 of their patients and respective associated data, and reportedly observed a number of therapeutic effects.

As recently as 2006, the New York Times published an article referring to naftalan as mostly naphthalene, which would be carcinogenic to humans. In 2009, The Independent described one of the spas, repeating the claim about the composition of the oil.