Classification of environmental pollutants for global mobility potential.

The environmental behaviour of global organic contaminants is known to be controlled by the physico-chemical properties of the compounds themselves. The principal component analysis of some physico-chemical properties, particularly relevant in determining mobility potential (vapour pressure, Henry's law constant, water solubility, K(OW), K(OA) and melting point) allows a multivariate approach to a ranking of organic pollutants according to their intrinsic tendency towards mobility, and the definition of four a priori mobility classes for screening purposes. Quantitative structure-property relationships (QSPRs) were used to predict missing values for octanol/air partition coefficients. Finally, a classification method employing theoretical molecular descriptors was used to assign studied chemicals to four mobility classes. The proposed approach assesses, directly and simply, a pollutant's inherent tendency towards mobility using only knowledge of the pollutant's molecular structure; the approach is particularly useful for a preliminary screening and the prioritisation of organic pollutants of emerging environmental concern.