Re-examining Fenton and Fenton-like reactions

The Fenton and Fenton-like reactions are important in biology because they are a major source of oxidative stress. The reactions also feature in advanced oxidation technologies to remediate organic pollutants. Unfortunately, these reactions are often simplistically viewed as affording only OH˙ radicals as the active species. Indeed, a variety of additional oxidizing intermediates form, including OR˙, Mn+2Lm, MnLm−1(O2H−), MnLm−1(O2R−) and CO3˙−, depending on the system. Under physiological conditions, CO3˙− is probably the major oxidizing intermediate.