The impact on the environment should be evaluated depending on the earliest ecosystem is going to receive the substances: if the first ecosystem is an aquatic one, the first feature to check is the toxicity vs aquatic organisms. This is expressed as EC50 (that is the concentration at which the 50% of fishes, crustaceans, weeds or bacteria will be inhibited or killed by the chemical) in mg/L. In many detergents, a lot of chemicals are very toxic for aquatic organisms, so their EC50 is lower than 1 mg/L (that is: very low concentration is enough to damage or kill half the amount of aquatic organisms).
Other parameters are very important too, as the mobility and the persistence in the ground – particularly useful to evaluate the chemicals which show the tendency to pass from water to soil (for ex.: phosphonates) – or the evaporation rate and, in case, photodegradation, that is the tendency to be degraded by solar light (for ex.: dioxane, cyclotetrasiloxane) – or the easy biodegradability, which measures the tendency to hoard in the environment over time or not.
This is is a very important parameter, because it measures the ability of bacteria, living in the environment, to degrade chemicals in a defined period of time. Before the application of Reg CE/648/2004 about detergents, there was no time defined to consider readily biodegradable a surfactant, or another chemical… but a substance could be biodegradated in 20, 100 or more… years! Now, a readily biodegradable chemical must be mineralized (that is broken up until only water, carbon dioxide and nitrogen remain) by bacteria in specified conditions in maximum 28 days. This feature is measured according to OECD Tests 301 and equivalents.
Bensos’ perfumeless products contain only readily biodegradable chemicals and minerals.
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