EESA10H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Absorbed Dose, Chronic Toxicity, Toxicokinetics
Document Summary
Lecture 10 can help you with question#1 of assignment 2. Environmentalists are concerned about the fate and transport of contaminants in the environment. Once the chemicals are released into the environments, the chemicals have a certain pathway from which they go through, which is called fate. Fate: chemical or physical transformations of contaminants in the environment. Transport: movements of contaminants within or between environmental media. Fate and transport of chemicals is affected by their physical-chemical properties. How harmful a substance is depends on physical-chemical properties of the substance some are more volatile and hence will stay more in air, and some are more water-soluble and hence are present more in water. Therefore the chemical properties of the substances result in their fate. Some common physical-chemical properties include: volatility, electronegativity, polarity, solubility-organic chemicals are better soluble in fats than in water because they are hydrophobic.