Fatty Alcohols: Anthropogenic and Natural Occurrence in the Environment

Fatty alcohols occur naturally in most organisms and can also be used in consumer products including detergents and cosmetics and all of these materials make their way to the sea eventually. These long chain alcohols can be used as biomarkers due to their distinctive source allocations although they have differential degradation rates across the range of chain lengths. Concern has been raised about their inputs from anthropogenic uses and this book seeks to set out the natural and industrial synthetic pathways, sources, signatures, concentrations in the environment, toxicity and eco-toxicity before summarising their impact. Their large scale synthesis for industrial uses puts them in the ‘High Production Volume’ category and they will need to be addressed in REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) - a new European legislation for chemicals and substances. There is no other book that considers the fatty alcohols from their production, environmental behaviour and potential toxicity viewpoint. The book, which is also well illustrated, presents for the first time environmental data from many locations around the world and discusses the anthropogenic contributions to these places.