Experimental hydrophobicity parameters of perfluorinated alkylated substances from reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography

Abstract

Environmental contextPerfluorinated compounds are synthetic chemicals shown to be present in the blood of humans. To study how these contaminants get into our blood requires a good understanding of their physicochemical properties. We describe an alternative way to obtain values for how perfluorinated compounds distribute between water and fatty phases (mimicking e.g. gut content and gut wall), which is essential information for modelling and understanding the environmental fate of these chemicals. AbstractCapacity factors of perfluorinated alkylated substances were obtained from isocratic reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry experiments at different organic modifier strengths of the mobile phase. The resulting capacity factor v. modifier strengths plots were extrapolated to obtain capacity factors at 100% water (k0) that can serve as indicators of the hydrophobicity of the perfluorinated acids. Values of log k0 were shown to increase linearly with the number of CF2 units in the fluorinated alkyl chain.