1 Journal of Environmental Monitoring 10:435-442, 2008 Solvation parameters for mercury and mercury(II) compounds: calculation of properties of environmental interest Michael H. Abraham, *a Javier Gil-Lostes, a William E. Acree, Jr. b J. Enrique Cometto-Muñiz, c and William S. Cain. c a Department of Chemistry, University College London, 20 Gordon Street, London WC1H OAJ, UK. Email:
[email protected] b Department of Chemistry, P. O. Box 305070, University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76203-5070, USA. c Chemosensory Perception Laboratory, Department of Surgery (Otolaryngology), University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0957, USA 2 Descriptors have been determined for four inorganic mercury(II) species and for seventeen organic mercury(II) species, using experimental literature data. These descriptors can then be used in equations that we have already set out in order to estimate a large number of physicochemical properties. These include the water to octanol partition coefficient and the gas to water partition coefficient. For the organic mercury(II) species, including dimethylmercury and the methylmercury(II) halides, the latter has been estimated over the temperature range 273-373K. Introduction Mercury and mercury(II) compounds are important species; dimethylmercury and methylmercury(II) compounds are known environmental pollutants. Although a number of thermodynamic properties are available especially for mercury 1, 2 and mercury(II) halides, 2 many other properties that are relevant to environmental and health issues are not known. A number of computational methods can be used for the calculation of a range of properties of compounds, but many of these methods such as SPARC,3 Advanced Chemistry Development 4 and PharmaAlgorithms, 5 cannot deal with any compounds that contain mercury atoms.