Petroleum distillates are hydrocarbons. Technically, two names for essentially the same thing. It's really hard to make a judgement without more information than that...
My suggestion is to check the MSDS. A flash point should be listed for any flammable product, and generally speaking which ever product containing petroleum distillates or hydrocarbon solvents has the HIGHEST FLASH POINT contains the least amount of volatile organic compounds, or VOC's, which is the main environmental and health hazard.
However, beware that low VOC ratings do not always correspond to a low solvent content. Since VOC ratings are time dependant a low VOC product may simply contain a large of amount of a high boiling point solvent which flashes off slowly and thus provides for a low VOC rating when compared to another product with the same w/w % of solvent and a low boiling point (quick flash off of solvents yields high VOC content).
So, a high flash point tells us that the product is less flammable and thus contains less VOC's and therefor should be safer to work with from a fume standpoint.
Hope that was helpful, let me know if I need to clarify some...
