Risk Assessment, Environmental and Health Hazards of Hexane (HEX) and Ethyl Acetate (EtOAc): A Review
Renato Augusto Pereira Damásio
*
Department of Chemical Engineering, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, USA.
Karar Abed
Department of Environmental and Forest Biology, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, USA.
Jenna Meyer
Department of Environmental and Forest Biology, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, USA.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Background: Manufactured chemicals are the second important classes as the natural chemicals mentioned above and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) projects global chemical production to rise by 3.4 % in 2024 and 3.5 % in 2025, after increasing just 0.3 % in 2023. Exist a variety of process in the industries that use a wide range of different chemicals accordingly their classes considering structure, polarity solubility for specific targeting. The common organic solvents are generally classified as an aliphatic hydrocarbon, aromatic hydrocarbon, cyclic hydrocarbon, halogenated hydrocarbon, amines, ketones, esters, ether, aldehyde, alcohols among others. Objective: This short-critical review will discuss throughout the literature background risk assessment, environmental and health hazard of two organic solvents as known Hexane (HEX) and Ethyl Acetate (EtoAc).
Methods: The most significative databases regarding risk assessment, environmental, and health hazard was consulted and evaluated as American Chemistry Council (ACC); National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information in the NIH (National Library of Medicine); U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA); European Chemicals Agency (ECHA-OECD); World Health Organization (WHO) and Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (AU).
Conclusions and Future Outlook: In recent decades, various efforts have been made to replace toxic VOCs in chemical processes, according to the principles of Green Chemistry and Green Extraction One of the. However even for EtoAc still exist and susbtantial lack of background do be evaluated and properly described. Additionally the lack of accurated data, the number of unclear regulations and non-standarized protocols to proof risk assessment, environmental and health hazard of VOCs as HEX and EtoAc and many other chemicals are still a great challenge to be harmonized.
Keywords: Hexane, HEX, Ethyl acetate, EtoAc, toxicity