Environmental aspects of polymer additives

The environmental behavior of stabilizers is not known for all chemicals which serve this purpose and further investigations will have to be done for a better understanding. From the investigations carried out on a few representative compounds, which are known to reach the environment, it can be shown that at the low concentrations at which such products appear in the environment even chemically inert substances such as hindered phenols or tin alkyl compounds are rapidly degraded and completely decomposed under the combined action of light, water, and microorganisms.