Monona,

                 I’m an analytical chemist, so I consulted with my “Organic”  c olleagues.  The best they can come up with is something like

                                 R-O-(CH₂)n-OR’

i.e., you take a poly-ol and replace one, or more, of the alcohol H’s with an alkyl group.    In SciFinder it sh ows a similar structure but with the R group being the carboxyl end of an ester and several repeating ether linkages.  Essentially, you’re looking a t poly ethers, sometimes as part of an ester.  By the way, this is not really commonly used nomenclature.  I agree that it sounds like the manufacturers are trying to obfuscate. 

                 Hope this helps. 

Kay Calhoun

P.S. Thanks for the opportunity to use obfuscate.

OK, professors, I give up on this class of chemicals.  I am seeing MSDSs o n everything from detergents to pesticides to photosensitive chemical develop ers listing this category of chemical.  Of course, they are hiding an individual chemical by listing a whole class probably by a synonym, but I'm even confused about what the generic structure looks like.

I know what an alkyl group is, so let's call it R-

I know what an alcohol looks like, so lets use ethanol.

Oxy means an 0=

But how do I fit these together into what they are talking about?

Thanks.

Monona