Evaluating Potential POP/PBT Compounds for
Environmental Persistence
A report evaluating potential POP (Persistent Organic Pollutants) or PBT (Persistent, Bioaccumulative, and Toxic Compounds) was recently prepared with support from the Chlorine Chemistry Council by Dallas Aronson and Philip Howard. In this report procedures are discussed for determining if a chemical should be classified as persistent using criteria that are being considered internationally. Due to the inherent variability in experimentally-measured degradation rates, persistence criteria should not be considered as specific cutoff values but as guidelines for making scientifically-valid judgments regarding the ability of a compound to persist or not in an environmental medium.

Anaerobic Biodegradation of Organic Chemicals in
Groundwater Report
The focus of the "anaerobic biodegradation in groundwater project" was to demonstrate that for a number of organic chemicals, there is sufficient laboratory and field data from a variety of studies to provide adequate characterization of the biodegradability of the chemicals under diverse groundwater environments. In this document, SRC reviewed the available anaerobic groundwater biodegradation literature for 44 common organic chemicals (including BTEX, chlorinated aliphatic compounds, phenolic compounds, common freons, ketones, organic acids, and polychlorinated aromatic hydrocarbons) and identified biodegradation rate constants from these studies. Information about the site including location and type of site (e.g. spill site, industrial location, pristine site, landfill), the sampling protocol and method of analysis, the type of study (e.g. field, laboratory microcosm, in situ microcosm), whether the compound was present alone or found in the presence of others, pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen concentrations, redox conditions, initial and final concentrations of the compound, a published or calculated rate constant, length of the study, lag period, control results, general comments (to accommodate other important information) and an abbreviated reference are presented in the complete database.

The Anaerobic Biodegradation Report (pdf) or the Anaerobic Biodegradation Database application can be downloaded directly from this site. The database is available as a stand-alone Microsoft Access application that runs with Windows 3.1 and 95 ("Runtime") for users without MS Access installed. For those users with MS Access already installed, the database is available in MS Access 2.0 format or MS Access 95 format.

The database is downloaded as a "ZIP" file, and needs to be un-zipped (de-compressed) with PKZIP, WINZIP or similar programs. After downloading the database from this website, it should be "un-zipped" into a temporary subdirectory or folder. Then the setup program (SETUP.exe) needs to be run to install the program. After installation, the temporary folder can be deleted.

MS Access Runtime DB (3352 KB)

MS Access 2.0 DB (221 KB)

MS Access 95 DB (257 KB)

Aerobic Biodegradation of Organic Chemicals in
Environmental Media
The focus of the "aerobic biodegradation project" was to demonstrate that for a number of organic chemicals, there are sufficient laboratory and field data from a variety of studies to provide adequate characterization of the biodegradability of the chemicals in aerobic environments. Unlike the anaerobic biodegradation rate constant database previously compiled (Aronson and Howard, 1997), the aerobic biodegradation rate constant database includes rate constant information from soil, surface water, sediment as well as aquifer environments. In this document, SRC reviews the available aerobic biodegradation literature for 25 common organic chemicals (including BTEX, chlorinated aliphatic compounds, phenolic compounds, and polychlorinated aromatic hydrocarbons) and identifies biodegradation rate constants from these studies. Information about the site including location and type of site (e.g. spill site, industrial location, pristine site, landfill), the sampling protocol, and method of analysis, the type of study (e.g. field, laboratory microcosm, in situ microcosm), whether the compound was present alone or found in the presence of others, pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen concentrations, redox conditions, initial and final concentrations of the compound, a published or calculated rate constant, length of the study, lag period, control results, general comments (accommodate other important information) and an abbreviated reference are presented in the complete database.