Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
PAMUKKALE UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING SCIENCES-PAMUKKALE UNIVERSITESI MUHENDISLIK BILIMLERI DERGISI, cilt.22, sa.6, ss.486-496, 2016 (ESCI)
Chirality exists in a wide range of objects in the universe from living creatures to natural or synthetic organic materials. As a common expression, any objects that are not superimposable on its mirror image are described as chiral molecules, and such materials are used in various fields including pharmaceutical industry and medicine. Each mirror image of chiral molecules are called enantiomer and while one of the enantiomers may be active and more toxic than the other in its application area and once they enter to the environmental compartments less-active enantiomer or both enantiomers can cause environmental pollution and toxicity on living organisms. Enantiomers show difference in biological degradation such that this property is used as a useful tool in environmental pollution assessment/research studies. In addition to the environmental compartments such as soil, sediment, air and water, they are also analyzed in living organisms by various methods including primarily the chromatographic methods. In this review, chirality and the properties, analysis methods and fate of the chiral chemicals which have significance in the environmental studies are presented. Due to various advantages, chiral chemicals are used in several industrial products and once they are released to the environment, they become environmentally concerned pollutants and play an important role in environmental monitoring studies due to their biological activities. In our country, although it is very limited, chiral pollutants have already became subject to monitoring studies, hence, understanding the enantioselective degradation of such chemicals in different environmental compartments is important to assess the fate of these chemicals.