Aquatic toxicity—Are surfactant properties relevant?

There are two potential approaches for quantitative structure‐activity relationships modeling of aquatic toxicity of surfactants. One is to try to relate toxicity to parameters describing the surfactant properties, which can be measured or calculated. The other approach is to try to apply to surfactants parameters such as log P (P=octanol/water partition coefficient), which can also be used to relate toxicity to structure for nonsurfactants. This paper compares the two approaches and presents new data supporting the second approach as the more mechanistically relevant. Further refinements in the calculation method for log P are presented.