Estimating Koc for persistent organic pollutants:: limitations of correlations with Kow

The n-octanol/water partition coefficient (K-ow) is commonly used to predict the soil or aquatic particle water partition coefficient normalized to organic carbon (K-oc). Many correlations are available covering several chemical classes and ranges of hydrophobicity. This work indicates the K-ow may not be a strong predictor for persistent organic pollutants (POPs) which are defined here as chemicals with logK(ow) > 5.0. In addition, the correlation developed in this work for POPs will still result in a predicted value which is of by a factor of 15. Accordingly, care must be taken when applying K-oc estimations using K-ow for POPs until more suitable correlations are developed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.