Progress on the Study of the Octanol-Air Partition Coefficient

The application of octanol-air partition coefficient(K_(OA)) in describing the fate of organic pollutants in the environment and the methods to determine or predict K_(OA) values since 1990s are reviewed.K_(OA) is a key descriptor for describing the partition of organic pollutants and especially persistent organic pollutants(POPs) between air and environmental organic phases.The experimental measurement and theoretical estimation of K_(OA) were developed,but many more K_(OA) values and their temperature dependence data of other POPs leave undetermined.It is needed to develop simpler method to estimate K_(OA) values and their temperature dependence which will be applied to the evaluation on their behavior in the environment.