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CHIRAL CHEMISTRY OF PESTICIDES IN THE ENVIRONMENT WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR POLLUTION PREVENTION
Citation:
Garrison, A W. CHIRAL CHEMISTRY OF PESTICIDES IN THE ENVIRONMENT WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR POLLUTION PREVENTION. Presented at 3rd Annual Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference, Washington, DC, June 29-July 1, 1999.
Description:
Upwards of 25% of pesticides and other toxic pollutants are chiral; that is, they exist as two mirror image species called enantiomers. The enantiomers of a chiral compound have identical physical and abiotic chemical properties, but differ in biological properties such as microbial degradation, uptake and transport across membranes, metabolism rate, and toxicity. Recent research has demonstrated the differences in environmental occurrences, fate and effects of the enantiomers of several chiral pesticides, including alpha-hexachlorocyclohexane, metolachlor, o,p'-DDT, the phenoxypropionic acid herbicides, some organophosphorus compounds, and others. Examples of such research will be given, along with examples of modem analytical techniques for enantiomer separation that are necessary to conduct research on the chirality of pesticides in the environment. Chiral pesticides are almost always manufactured and formulated as their racemic mixtures -- one objective of this research is to make the manufacture and use of single-enantiomer pesticides attractive as a pollution prevention measure, given that the enantiomer that is not active to the target species may have undesirable effects on the environment.