Response to Letter to the Editor "Distinguishing Aroclor and non-Aroclor sources to Chicago Air"

Chlorination and bromination are important classes of electrophilic aromatic substitutions, where benzene reacts with chlorine or bromine in the presence of a Lewis acid catalyst to give halogenated substitution products. A Lewis acid such as aluminium chloride or ferric chloride catalyzes the chlorination, and ferric bromide catalyzes the bromination reactions. During the bromination of alkenes, bromine polarizes and becomes electrophilic. However, in the bromination of benzene, the bromine...

In the presence of heat or light, alkanes react with molecular halogens to form alkyl halides by a substitution reaction called radical halogenation. This reaction has three steps: initiation, propagation, and termination, as seen in the radical chlorination of methane to produce methyl chloride.
In the initiation step of the reaction, the chlorine molecule undergoes homolytic cleavage in the presence of light or heat, forming two highly reactive chlorine radicals. Propagation occurs in two...

Stereochemistry is the study of the different spatial arrangements of atoms in a given molecule. The stereochemistry of radical halogenations can be understood from three different situations:
Halogenation to form a new chiral center:

Cycloalkanes are saturated cyclic hydrocarbons with carbon atoms arranged in the form of rings. They have two fewer hydrogen atoms than the corresponding acyclic alkane; therefore, their general formula is CnH2n. The structural formulas of cycloalkanes are simplified using the line-angle representation. The regular polygons are used to represent the cycloalkane rings, with each side representing a carbon-carbon bond.
The IUPAC nomenclature of cycloalkanes follows similar rules that apply to...