Including Abiotic Degradation

The mobility of chemicals released into the environment governs their bioavailability to organisms and their partitioning between environmental compartments, and thus represents a direct link between environmental pollution and ecotoxicity. The microand mesoscale transport processes involved are related to the properties of the chemicals themselves, but also to environmental compartments. Thus, the criteria of mobility, dispersion, and bioavailability are closely related, having partly a common set of influencing variables. A number of these variables depend on climatic factors, especially temperature and water regimes. A knowledge of the relationships would permit prediction of the relevant descriptors for any climatic conditions without performing the respective experiments.