نبذة مختصرة : The consumption of household and personal care products in Australia is similar to that of more highly regulated agricultural and veterinary chemicals. One class of chemical used in cosmetic applications, polymeric quaternary ammonium salts (polyquaterniums), is thought to have adverse effects on aquatic organisms. These polymers belong to a larger class of polymers, cationic polyelectrolytes, that are widely used in industry, largely for water treatment, and that have been extensively studied and regulated. The cosmetic polyquaterniums, however, have not been subject to the same scrutiny, even though differences in, or expectations of, their behaviour are known to exist. The aim of this study was to examine the fate and toxicity of some cosmetic polyquaterniums, and particularly to examine the impact of the presence of the anionic surfactant, sodium dodecyl sulphate, that is often complexed with the polyquaterniums in cosmetic formulations on fate and toxicity. The polyquaterniums studied consisted of six samples of Polyquaternium-10 of provided by Amerchol (The Dow Chemical Company, Midland, MI U.S.A.), five samples of three polyquaterniums (Polyquaternium-11, Polyquaternium-28, Polyquaternium-55) provided by International Specialty Products (ISP, Wayne, New Jersey, USA), and polydimethyldiallyl ammonium chloride (poly(DADMAC), Polyquaternium-6), widely used in water treatment but less commonly in cosmetic applications purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (Castle Hill, NSW, Australia). The four-step risk assessment paradigm (hazard identification, exposure assessment, hazard assessment, risk characterisation) provided the framework for this study. Metachromatic polyelectrolyte titration was used to analyse polyquaterniums in aqueous solution. Although the method is generally not viable in the presence of other ions due to interference, it was found to be viable in the presence of the anionic surfactant sodium dodecyl sulphate. Further, the method was found to work with the supernatant following a sorption experiment ...
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