ABSTRACT
Anthropogenic organic pollutants (AOPs) may be dened as any organic chemical that is foreign to the natural ecosystem, which is released into the natural ecosystem by human activities and may pose adverse e¦ects, either directly or indirectly, on humans and/or other organisms, and on the natural physical, chemical, and biological equilibrium/processes in the environment. Mostly, AOPs are commonly produced and used for the rapid industrialization in agriculture and expansion in various other industries. Emissions of these harmful AOPs have led to local and global deterioration of the environment when they have accumulated in air, water, sediments, soils, and biota, including man (Schwarzenbach et al., 2003). Most of these compounds are hydrophobic organic compounds (HOCs), having attracted a great deal of research interest for more than three decades because of their persistence in the environment and tendency to bioaccumulate. “Hydrophobic” means low water solubility, which is a major factor of HOCs a¦ecting their fate in the environment (Stokes et al., 2006).
