Behavioral Approach Textbook Assignment

The normal alkanes are synthesized in plants and certain types of insects. However, no scientific proofs have illustrated that n-alkanes are biosynthesized in mammals (Hutter, et al. Therefore, it would be unlikely that the alkanes on the human skins are not produced in the human body. Alkanes are believed to be ubiquitous in the surrounding due to the increased utilization of the petroleum materials in the current world. For example, industries have adopted the use of the mineral oil and paraffin wax as a lubricant, texturizers, binders, and coating since water-impermeable. Further studies also demonstrate that a greater percentage of the alkanes in the stratum corneum of mammals are exposed to the polluted air in the environment. Several debates have been used to criticize whether the alkanes are biosynthetic products of the mammalian skin.

The composition of the alkanes found on the human skin resembles that of the petroleum wax because the lipids extracted from the mammalian skin comprise of variable quantities of the paraffin hydrocarbons. This paper would summarize the findings of the experiment to investigate whether the alkanes found on the human skin are biosynthetic products of the human skin. Based on the research, the author observed three types of carbon chain profiles. 25 percent of the modern ambient level consists of the C content of the commercial sample of the white petrolatum. This indicates the theoretical age of 35,250 years ago. Therefore, based on the results, there should be no detected petroleum because petroleum is many million years old. As a result, the presence of petroleum in the sample could indicate the availability of the contaminants in the samples used for the experiment.