A PRELIMINARY EVALUATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BIOCONCENTRATION AND HYDROPHOBICITY FOR SURFACTANTS

A statistical analysis was done of the relationship between hydrophobicity and bioconcentration parameters (uptake and elimination rate constants and bioconcentration factor) predicted by the diffusive mass-transfer (DMT) concept of bioconcentration developed previously. We employed polychlorinated biphenyls and benzenes (PCB/zs) as model compounds and the octanol/water partition coefficient as hydrophobicity parameter. We conclude that the model is consistent with the data. Subsequently, we applied the DMT concept to a set of preliminary bioconcentration data for surfactants using the critical micelle concentration (CMC) as hydrophobicity parameter. The obtained relationships qualitatively agree with the DMT concept, indicating that hydrophobicity is of great influence on surfactant bioconcentration. Finally, we investigated the hydrophobicity-bioconcentration relationships of surfactants and PCB/zs using aqueous solubility as common hydrophobicity parameter and found the relationships between the bioconcentration parameters and hydrophobicity to agree with the DMT concept. These findings are based on total radiolabel data. Therefore, they need to be confirmed using compound-specific surfactant bioconcentration data.