Surfactants environmental concerns related

The sustainable management of sediments, in addition to water, soil and sludge environmental matrices, in relation to surfactant regulations, is also an important and relevant issue. The US EPA has recently shown concern regarding the levels of surfactants in sediments and has thus released a Draft Contaminated Sediment Science Plan. In this draft, recommendations for the development of analytical methods and evaluations of the toxicity and risk assessment of Emerging endocrine disrupters like APEOs and their metabolites in sediment samples are outlined. 

A key concern for formulators is the biodegradability of the surfactants they use. This has been driven by a growing public awareness of potential environmental and health issues related to chemicals in general. Certainly this has been the case in the consumer products market for some time, where people are concerned that chemicals ending up in the sewage system pose a threat to their local rivers and water supply. Today, the concern has spread beyond the consumer products market and is inherent in all industries using surfactants. 

The choice of a particular emulsifier system for an application will depend on several factors, some of which will be chemically related (optimum HLB, PIT, etc.), while others will be driven by economic, environmental, and aesthetic factors. The relative value of the latter will depend mostly on price and value-added considerations for each individual system. Here we are concerned only with the chemical aspects of emulsion formation and stabilization. In most general applications, the HLB system has been found most useful in guiding the formulator to a choice of surfactant most suited to individual needs. Table 9.3 lists the ranges of HLB numbers that have proved to be most useful for various applications. 

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