Materials and methods A retrospective case-control study was performed. Industry workers from an oil refinery were monitored for a 6yrs period. The air levels of aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons were monitored. During this period, all workers received regular clinical examinations, which included evaluation for smoking status, occupational exposure to hydrocarbons (aliphatic and aromatic), a...

A force field is presented that has been optimized for chlorinated hyrocarbons containing isolated, vicinal, and geminal secondary chlorines. For carbon-chlorine stretch modes, 74 frequencies in 10 molecules are reproduced with an average error of 4.5 cm-‘. This force field can therefore serve to study these conformation-dependent modes in multiply-chlorinated hydrocarbons.

Plants are increasingly being employed to clean up environmental pollutants such as heavy metals; however, a major limitation of phytoremediation is the inability of plants to mineralize most organic pollutants. A key component of organic pollutants is halogenated aliphatic compounds that include 1,2-dichloroethane (1,2-DCA). Although plants lack the enzymatic activity required to metabolize th...

The study of a population of 4-year-old children born between 1997 and 1999 in an urban area under strong inputs of pentachlorobenzene (PeCB) and hexachlorobenzene (HCB) suggested that the measured concentrations of pentachlorophenol (PCP) in serum may essentially result from metabolism of these chlorinated hydrocarbons. In contrast, examination of a rural population of children where the same ...

The separation of aromatic hydrocarbons (benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylenes) from C4 to C10 aliphatic hydrocarbon mixtures is challenging since these hydrocarbons have boiling points in a close range and several combinations form azeotropes. In this work, we investigated the separation of toluene from heptane by extraction with ionic liquids. Several ionic liquids are suitable for extr...

Evidence is presented for a catabolic pathway of n-alkane oxidation which proceeds via subterminal oxidation rather than methyl group oxidation.