>>1492121>The best ones are thin because that provides long burning with a minimum of wood support burned (useless smoke)I'm glad your grandparents had great smelling incense but the thickness of the wooden stick is nearly irrelevant because there are only two types of incense and there's a lot of wood/wood product involved either way:
smelly stuff like resins, leaves, branches, etc. not mixed with anything else, that you throw on a bed of glowing charcoal (being the wood product, only with fewer volatiles than non-burnt wood);
smelly stuff powdered and mixed with two powdered chemicals that are needed to keep it smouldering.
Between these the difference is that the first type doesn't have to keep itself burning, that's what the charcoal bed is for. To sustain a slow burn all stick and cone incense, is a mixture of smelly stuff, charcoal/wood powder, and nitrate.
That nitrate is the source of NOx and your grandparents' stick incense was making it in abundance. The benzenes and aldehydes are made through destructive distillation of aromatic and other organic compounds in the fragrance and the wood. The heat is to volatilise the fragrance and the destructive distillation is mostly an unwanted side effect but your grandparents' great smelling incense was doing that. As well as that there's the carbon monoxide from the wood or charcoal primarily. Thin or thick stick, your grandparents' incense was producing an abundance of the same toxins.
>aromatherapyAlmost every aromatherapist I have ever interacted with has been a quack and so is the vast majority of aromatherapy and its claims. They don't even know which oils are best for sleep: protip: it's not lavender but that's what every aromatherapist I have asked and every aromtherapy website and book I have ever read has said was best. It's good, but it's maybe number three. Numbers one and two are extremely common and a lot cheaper. I just looked and everywhere lavender was 3.5 to 4 times more expensive than them.
