[citation needed] In 1899, Charles Ernest Overton and Hans Horst Meyer independently proposed that the tadpole toxicity of non-ionizable organic compounds depends on their ability to partition into lipophilic compartments of cells.
They further proposed the use of the partition coefficient in an olive oil/water mixture as an estimate of this lipophilic associated toxicity.
Corwin Hansch later proposed the use of n-octanol as an inexpensive synthetic alcohol that could be obtained in a pure form as an alternative to olive oil.
Chemicals with high partition coefficients, for example, tend to accumulate in the fatty tissue of organisms (bioaccumulation).
[8] Kow values also provide a good estimate of how a substance is distributed within a cell between the lipophilic biomembranes and the aqueous cytosol.