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by mirimir 2265 days ago
Huh.

I see that some artificial vanillin is made from lignin, but I don't know whether natural wood decomposition creates vanillin. Do you have a reference for that?

1 comments

lignin is wood (or rather it's a polymer in the cell walls of wood/plants)
For sure. But the question is whether vanillin is produced during wood decay.
It does

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S134035400...

https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jjfs1953/37/7/37_7_298/...

> vanillin was also detectèd as a product of wood degradation by some other wood destroying fungi.

Good find.

The levels of vanillin in waterways (14mg per liter) are ridiculously high for human urine to be the sole source.