Chiral pollutants sources

Chirality has been used to distinguish among sources of chiral pollutants to environmental compartments, such as the atmosphere or natural water bodies. Because partitioning processes between environmental media (e.g. deposition, volatilization) are physical processes, they are not likely to be enantioselective. Thus, if the enantiomer compositions of a chiral pollutant differ among environmental compartments, then a comparison of enantiomer signatures of different compartments can help to identify pollutant sources. The contribution of two sources to the environmental compartment of interest can be assessed quantitatively [303] ... 

The basic sources of chiral pollutants are point and nonpoint in origin. The point and nonpoint sources have already been discussed above. Mostly, chiral pollutants contaminate water resources, sediments and soils. However, these pollutants have also been reported in the atmosphere, and in animal and plant bodies [5, 6]. The percentage contamination of air is very low in comparison to that of water, sediments and soils [5]. Recently, Hegeman and Laane [7] reviewed the distribution of chiral pollutants in the environment. Briefly, chiral pollutants enter into the food chain and are transported into vegetables, fruit and other edible foodstuffs, and finally into the human body. This results in different types of disease, which will be discussed in Chapter 4. 

Chiral pollutants from various sources are contaminating our environment, as discussed above. The presence of chiral pollutants in sea water and sediment indicates the transportation of these pollutants from the point of origin (source) to the sea. There are many pesticides that have already been banned for a long time, but their presence in sea water shows their persistence in the environment These chiral pollutants, especially pesticides, have been reported in the various body parts of aquatic and terrestrial animals, including human beings, and have entered into the body through the food chain. A detailed search of the literature indicates that only a few reports on the detection of chiral pollutants are available. 

Little work has been done on POP enantiomers in wastewater and activated sludge, in part because other sources to the environment exist compared to some emerging pollutants such as drugs [29]. One of the few studies to investigate behavior of chiral legacy POPs in... 

Little work has been done to characterize air-surface exchange of chiral semivolatUe current-use pollutants. However, the observations of slightly enriched ( )-a-HBCDD and racemic fS- and y-HBCDD in Chinese urban air suggest that the atmospheric source of HBCDD may be a mixture of both local unweathered emissions and volatilization of weathered residues from soil [321]. Measurements of soil EF profiles for HBCDD have not yet been done to confirm or refute this hypothesis. 

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