Impact of ionic liquids in environment and humans: an overview.
Ionic liquids enclose a large number of molecular structures consisting of a cation and an anion. Their physical state and their chemical properties can be tuned by different combination of the ions and a large number of ionic liquids have already been reported. Toxicity of ionic liquids is a subject of great importance concerning their likely use as greener solvents and new materials for a broad number of potential applications. This review provides relevant toxicological data published so far about this topic and includes a large range of ionic liquids based on different cations (imidazolium, pyridinium, pyrrolidinium, quaternary ammonium, quaternary phosphonium and guanidinium) and anions (halogens-Br, Cl, bis (trifluoromethyl)sulfonylamide, tetrafluoroborate, hexafluorophosphate, dicyanamide, acesulfame and saccharin, amongst others). In general, toxicity of ionic liquids depends on both ions and the effect of the cation alkyl chain length is very pronounced although the type of anion also exerts impact on the overall toxicity.
CQFM, Centro de Química-Física Molecular, IN - Institute of Nanosciences and Nanotechnology, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisboa, Portugal. raquel.frade@ist.utl.pt
Raquel Fm
RF
Frade
Carlos Am
CA
Afonso
D000818:Animals; D000838:Anions / Q000737:chemistry / Q000633:toxicity; D059001:Aquatic Organisms / Q000187:drug effects; D002412:Cations / Q000737:chemistry / Q000633:toxicity; D002460:Cell Line; D004785:Environmental Pollutants / Q000737:chemistry / Q000633:toxicity*; D006801:Humans; D052578:Ionic Liquids / Q000737:chemistry / Q000633:toxicity*; D018675:Toxicity Tests / Q000379:methods
D000838:Anions; D002412:Cations; D004785:Environmental Pollutants; D052578:Ionic Liquids