A comparison of alcohol ethoxylate environmental monitoring data using different analytical procedures.

Several analytical methods have been developed for analyzing alcohol ethoxylates (AE) in aqueous environmental samples. These methods differ widely in their selectivity and sensitivity for measuring the AE components; that is, they vary in their resolution of alkyl chain length homologs and ethoxymer distributions (degree of ethoxylation for each homolog). Given these differences, AE monitoring results from different studies often are inconsistent and, sometimes, are deemed to be incomparable.