Stoddard solvent, Mineral spirit, what's the difference?

[strangerep]

Hi,

I'm a 1st-time poster in the chemistry forum. (Only did 1 year of chem at Uni.)

I'm trying to understand the content of an organic paint-additive product "Penetrol".

http://www.floodaustralia.net/products/paint_additives/penetrol.php

The MSDS can be downloaded from this page:
http://www.floodaustralia.net/safety/

On the 2nd page of the MSDS, it says the product has

57% "Stoddard solvent", CAS No 64742-47-8
<11% "Mineral spirit", CAS No 8052-41-3

Looking on Wikipedia, i.e., here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_spirit ,
I get impression that "Stoddard solvent", "Mineral spirit", "Mineral Turpentine", and "White spirit" are all the same.

But if so, why do they have different CAS numbers? And why list them separately in the MSDS?

Can any organic/industrial chemists here shed some light on this?

 

[Borek]

Quoting wiki:

CAS Registry Numbers are unique numerical identifiers assigned by the Chemical Abstracts Service to every chemical described in the open scientific literature

From what I remember they are assigned to compounds (sometimes mixtures) as they are described in literature, but the process never was (and is not) completely error free, so it is not uncommon that some chemicals are assigned numbers more than once. Plus, sometimes they are simply abused or misused, adding to confusion. You are not the first one to not understand - compare http://www.chemspider.com/blog/cas-registry-numbers-and-how-confused-we-are.html.

 

[strangerep]

[...] You are not the first one to not understand - compare http://www.chemspider.com/blog/cas-registry-numbers-and-how-confused-we-are.html.

Hmm, thanks. That was an interesting (though depressing) read.