TR123. Environmental Risk Assessment of Ionisable Compounds
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Environmental Exposure Assessment of Ionisable Organic Compounds Technical Report No. 123 EUROPEAN CENTRE FOR ECOTOXICOLOGY AND TOXICOLOGY OF CHEMICALS Environmental Exposure Assessment of Ionisable Organic Compounds Technical Report No. 123 Brussels, December 2013 ISSN-0773-8072-123 (print) ISSN-2079-1526-123 (online) Environmental Exposure Assessment of Ionisable Organic Compounds ECETOC Technical Report No. 123 © Copyright – ECETOC AISBL European Centre for Ecotoxicology and Toxicology of Chemicals 2 Avenue E. Van Nieuwenhuyse (Bte 8), B-1160 Brussels, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Applications to reproduce, store, copy or translate should be made to the Secretary General. ECETOC welcomes such applications. Reference to the document, its title and summary may be copied or abstracted in data retrieval systems without subsequent reference. The content of this document has been prepared and reviewed by experts on behalf of ECETOC with all possible care and from the available scientific information. It is provided for information only. ECETOC cannot accept any responsibility or liability and does not provide a warranty for any use or interpretation of the material contained in the publication. ECETOC TR No. 123 Environmental Exposure Assessment of Ionisable Organic Compounds Environmental Exposure Assessment of Ionisable Organic Compounds CONTENTS SUMMARY 1 1. INTRODUCTION 3 1.1 Terms of Reference 4 1.2 Additional Considerations 5 2. MEASURED PARTITIONING PROPERTY DATA 7 2.1 Acid dissociation constant (Ka) 12 2.1.1 Definition 12 2.1.2 Ionisable groups 13 2.1.3 Measurement 14 2.1.4 Summary 15 2.2 Partition coefficient (KOW) and distribution ratio (DOW) 16 2.2.1 Definition 16 2.2.2 Summary and recommendation 17 2.2.3 Regulatory trigger values: Appropriateness, assumptions and gaps in science 18 2.3 Adsorption-desorption distribution (Kd) and organic carbon-water partition (KOC) coefficients 20 2.3.1 Definition 22 2.3.2 Freundlich isotherms 22 2.3.3 Summary and recommendation 24 2.3.4 Regulatory trigger values: Appropriateness, assumptions and gaps in science 25 2.4 Hydrolysis 25 2.5 Biodegradation 25 2.5.1 Definition(s) according to OECD 26 2.5.2 Summary and recommendation 27 2.5.3 Regulatory trigger values: Appropriateness, assumptions and gaps in science 28 3. ESTIMATED PARTITIONING PROPERTY DATA 29 3.1 Description of API dataset 29 3.2 Computational methods 32 3.2.1 log Kow 33 3.2.2 pKa 37 3.2.3 log DOW 42 3.2.4 log KOC 44 3.2.5 Biodegradation 48 4. MULTIMEDIA MODELS TO DERIVE PEC USED FOR ERA OF IONISABLE ORGANICS 51 4.1 Evaluative assessment of the equilibrium ʽchemical space’ for ionisable organic compounds 53 4.2 Towards an improved regression for the sorption of ionisable organic compounds to sludge 56 ECETOC TR No. 123 Environmental Exposure Assessment of Ionisable Organic Compounds 5. Experiences from the Agrochemicals Industry 60 5.1 The concept of soil adsorption and desorption 60 5.2 The synthetic pesticide ʽchemical space’ 61 5.2.1 General trends in the soil availability of pesticides 61 5.2.2 Soil adsorption and soil pH 62 5.2.3 Soil adsorption and clay mineralogy 63 5.2.4 Soil adsorption and metal chelation 64 5.2.5 Soil adsorption and the chemical nature of the soil organic matter 64 5.3 Conclusion 65 6. REGULATORY IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 66 6.1 The role of DOW versus Kow 67 6.2 Future needs 68 6.3 Recommendation 69 ABBREVIATIONS 71 APPENDIX A: MEASUREMENT OF ACIDITY (pKa) 72 APPENDIX B: MEASUREMENT OF PARTITIONing (Kow) 74 APPENDIX C: MEASUREMENT OF SORPTION (Kd) 77 APPENDIX D: MEASUREMENT OF HYDROLYSIS 79 APPENDIX E: MEASUREMENT OF BIODEGRADATION 80 APPENDIX F: IONISABLE COMPOUNDS DATA 84 BIBLIOGRAPHY 172 MEMBERS OF THE TASK FORCE 190 MEMBERS OF THE SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE 191 ECETOC TR No. 123 Environmental Exposure Assessment of Ionisable Organic Compounds SUMMARY This report seeks to improve the capability to estimate the bioavailability of ionisable organic compounds, and explores how this information could be used to derive more accurate environmental concentrations for use in assessing environmental risk. The report provides guidance on the analytical methods needed to measure key substance property data with respect to their applicability to ionisable compounds. Existing standard methods to determine acidity, partitioning and sorption were not always appropriate for ionisable compounds, while the methods for hydrolysis and biodegradation could be used for ionisable compounds without limitations. The report also reviews tools (computational methods) used to estimate those data. Some of the estimates based on quantitative structure activity relationships were more accurate when compared to a quality-assured database of 81 active pharmaceutical ingredients, compiled for the purpose. Additionally, an investigation was made of the use of multimedia models to predict the environmental concentration of an ionisable organic compound. It is demonstrated how, at a low-tier (pre-screening) level, environmental behaviour can be assessed beginning with an evaluation of the ʽchemical space’ of the equilibrium partitioning of ionisable organic compounds at different acidities (pH values). There remains a paucity of data directed at improving the mechanistic understanding of sorption, which is critical for improving the understanding of bioavailability and potential for bioconcentration and bioaccumulation. It would thus be prudent to focus future research needs on the development of improved mechanistic understanding. Comparable experiences and needs pertaining to the environmental fate and behaviour of ionisable organic compounds have been encountered by the agrochemicals industry, as summarised in an additional chapter of this report. In summary, the Task Force recommends that the environmental risk assessment of ionisable organic compounds emphasise a need for projecting robust and reliable estimates and/or measurements of bioavailability. Specifically: • Testing strategies, particularly those aimed at quantifying the octanol-water partition coefficient KOW, distribution ratio DOW and octanol-carbon partition coefficient KOC, need to ensure that they account for the potential for ionisation during the test, and the implications of ionisation with respect to modelling Clocalwater within the EU TGD framework are appropriately captured. • With regard to analytical methods, the finalisation of OECD test guideline 122 for measuring the acid dissociation (pKa), KOW and DOW is encouraged. • The use of quantitative structure activity relationships to estimate KOW, DOW, and KOC need to be checked for their applicability towards the chemical under investigation. Based on observations from data scrutinised within this report, greater confidence in estimation methods appears to be warranted for acids than for bases. • It is recommended that users compare output from more than one estimation method, for instance between SPARC and ACD with respect to estimates of DOW. • There is a need for a wider debate regarding the relevance of regulatory triggers, such as KOW, in screening ionisable organic chemicals for their potential to be persistent and bioaccumulative. • Are there surrogates, other than octanol, that could be better used as a metric for bioaccumulation. ECETOC TR No. 123 1 Environmental Exposure Assessment of Ionisable Organic Compounds Given the recent interest in ionisable organic compounds, such as those used as APIs, it is of great importance to improve mechanistic understanding of their sorption to various environmental matrices. Research is thus needed to transition the current understanding, which is largely based on interactions associated with neutral organic compounds with organic carbon, to an improved framework for assessing the electronic interactions of a charged molecule with charged solid surfaces. In particular: • Encourage updates to environmental risk assessment tools, such as SimpleBox and SimpleTreat, to better project concentrations of ionisable organic compounds. • To complement knowledge gained towards an improved assessment of exposure, there is a need to encourage support to address the relevance of ecotoxicological testing strategies for ionisable organic compounds. 2 ECETOC TR No. 123 Environmental Exposure Assessment of Ionisable Organic Compounds 1. INTRODUCTION The presence of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in the environment is not an area of new research. As far back as 1985, a review of the fate of pharmaceutical chemicals in the environment raised many of the issues that are still of concern today (Richardson and Bowron, 1985). It then took a decade, until field observations were made that sufficiently demonstrated an ecotoxicological effect on whole populations of fish following exposure to APIs (Harries et al, 1996, 1997), that research in this area began to grow. The trend is illustrated by results from a search of the literature on ‘pharmaceuticals’ and ‘environment’ for articles published in journals with an environmental focus (Figure 1). Figure 1: Increase in number of environmental articles on APIs published from 1985 to 2011 a a Results from the ISI Web of Science search engine using the terms ‘pharmaceutical’ and ‘environment’. Although it is not an exhaustive search, Figure 1 does demonstrate that there