Anionic surfactants regulations

Features Incompat. with soap and anionic surfactants Regulatory DOT regulated... 

Due to the wide distribution of the non-degradable anionic surfactants, in particular tetrapropylenebenzene-sulfonate, in detergents and cleaning agents in the fifties, these products caused a nuisance due to extremely stable foam that was created in many places. This prompted the legislature to act, and this particular field was the first to be regulated by special laws. 

To reduce the potential risk of environmentally harmful surfactants, requirements of a minimum primary degradation amounting to 80% for anionic and non-ionic surfactants was stipulated as far back as 1977 [4]. However, within this early regulation no restraints were included regarding cationic or amphoteric surfactants as these did not hold a significant market share when the laws came into force. 

In general, existing information is related to single species and acute toxicity these types of tests form the basis for the derivation of safe concentrations for a given chemical in the environment, according to EC regulation [6]. The data for surfactants other than anionic... 

Ionic surfactants are necessarily associated with counterions which may modify their properties significantly. Studies have indicated that optimum physiological effects of chlorpromazine hydrochloride (CPZ HCl) are regulated by pH constraints. Subsequent physicochemical studies have shown that the environment of the anionic counterion of chlorpromazine could have a profound effect on the behavior of the molecule. Such environmental changes could affect the conformation of the molecule, and therefore its interaction with receptors or molecular competitors in vivo. 

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