Abstract
Surfactants are one of the major components of detergent or household cleaning products. Several are commonly found in river waters and consequently, their impact on the aquatic environment has been discussed in the U.S.A, Western Europe and Japan. This paper reviewed the studies on the environmental monitoring, environmental fate, acute, chronic and sublethal toxicity, and environmental risk assessment of anionic surfactants. The reported acute and chronic toxicity data overlapped with some worse case of LAS environmental concentrations in rivers in Japan for a lack of adequate treatment of household gray water. Aquatic safety of other surfactants was considered preliminary and limited until validated with corresponding exposure measurements and chronic toxicity data for test species. Life-Cycle Assessment on surfactants was also reviewed.
