Effect of chlorophenolic pesticides on the photochemistry of riboflavin

Abstract

The possibility of riboflavin sensitized photo‐oxidation of polychlorinated pesticides was investigated. The dye proved to be an inefficient sensitizer for that purpose, when irradiated with visible light, in aereated aqueous solutions. A quenching of singlet and triplet excited states of the chromophore (depending on the concentrations of the quencher) is responsible for this failure in the photo‐degradation of the pesticides, which resulted easily oxidizable, via singlet oxygen mechanism, when proflavine was employed as a sensitizer. Parallel, and as a direct consequence, the rate of aerobic riboflavin photobleaching decreased drastically in the presence of the chlorophenols. The implication of our results on the inhibition of riboflavin degradation by the presence of chlorinated phenolic pesticides in the environment, is discussed, from the point of view of a kinetic and mechanistic study.