TY - JOUR

T1 - Towards the design of organosilicon compounds for environmental degradation by using structure biodegradability relationships

AU - Grabitz, Elisa

AU - Olsson, Oliver

AU - Kümmerer, Klaus

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by the Water Resource Award of the Rüdiger Kurt Bode-Stiftung (Deutsches Stiftungszentrum, Germany, project ID TS0393/26885/2015/KG, awardee Klaus Kümmerer). We thank Tobias Schäfer, Dennis Troegel, Reinhold Tacke, Gerhard Schottner, and Norbert W. Mitzel for providing and synthesizing organosilicon substances for biodegradation tests. Evgenia Logunova and Morten Suk helped to execute the biological degradation tests. We thank Stefanie Lorenz and Ann-Kathrin Amsel for help with Schrödinger and QSAR Toolbox and Jakob Menz for fruitful discussions regarding the ECHA database and the QSAR Toolbox, as well as Reinhold Tacke, Dennis Troegel and Norbert W. Mitzel for introducing us to organosilicon chemistry. Funding Information: This work was supported by the Water Resource Award of the Rüdiger Kurt Bode-Stiftung (Deutsches Stiftungszentrum , Germany, project ID TS0393/26885/2015/KG , awardee Klaus Kümmerer). We thank Tobias Schäfer, Dennis Troegel, Reinhold Tacke, Gerhard Schottner, and Norbert W. Mitzel for providing and synthesizing organosilicon substances for biodegradation tests. Evgenia Logunova and Morten Suk helped to execute the biological degradation tests. We thank Stefanie Lorenz and Ann-Kathrin Amsel for help with Schrödinger and QSAR Toolbox and Jakob Menz for fruitful discussions regarding the ECHA database and the QSAR Toolbox, as well as Reinhold Tacke, Dennis Troegel and Norbert W. Mitzel for introducing us to organosilicon chemistry. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

PY - 2021/9/1

Y1 - 2021/9/1

N2 - Organosilicon compounds have numerous applications in consumer products. After entering the environment most of them are resistant against microbial degradation and they persist in the environment.Accordingly, they are ubiquitously present in the environment.Therefore, better environmentally degradable organosilicon compounds are urgently needed. A systematic investigation of environmental degradability of organosilicon compounds allows to derive some general design principles, which in turn would enable chemists to reduce or better avoid environmentalpersistence of organosilicon compounds in the environment. Therefore, in this study, all organosilicon substances registered in the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) database were evaluated for their environmental biodegradability. Results of own experiments with different organosilicon substances were added to extend the data basis. A dataset was generated. An assessment of all data was done and invalid data were excluded. The remaining 182 substances were grouped regarding their structure to derive general rules for the environmental biodegradability of organosilicon compounds. Nonbiodegradable at all were for example cyclic, linear and branched siloxanes. Groups like ethers, esters,oximes, amines, and amides were prone to hydrolysis, which can result in readily biodegradable intermediates if they do not contain silicon functional groups anymore. This knowledge could be used for the design of better degradable organosilicon compounds as non-degradable substances should beavoided if they enter the environment after their usage.

AB - Organosilicon compounds have numerous applications in consumer products. After entering the environment most of them are resistant against microbial degradation and they persist in the environment.Accordingly, they are ubiquitously present in the environment.Therefore, better environmentally degradable organosilicon compounds are urgently needed. A systematic investigation of environmental degradability of organosilicon compounds allows to derive some general design principles, which in turn would enable chemists to reduce or better avoid environmentalpersistence of organosilicon compounds in the environment. Therefore, in this study, all organosilicon substances registered in the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) database were evaluated for their environmental biodegradability. Results of own experiments with different organosilicon substances were added to extend the data basis. A dataset was generated. An assessment of all data was done and invalid data were excluded. The remaining 182 substances were grouped regarding their structure to derive general rules for the environmental biodegradability of organosilicon compounds. Nonbiodegradable at all were for example cyclic, linear and branched siloxanes. Groups like ethers, esters,oximes, amines, and amides were prone to hydrolysis, which can result in readily biodegradable intermediates if they do not contain silicon functional groups anymore. This knowledge could be used for the design of better degradable organosilicon compounds as non-degradable substances should beavoided if they enter the environment after their usage.

KW - Chemistry

KW - biodegradability

KW - Enviromental behavior

KW - Biodegradation, Environmental

KW - Hydrolysis

KW - Organosilicon Compounds

KW - Silicon

KW - Siloxanes

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85104331592&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.130442

DO - 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.130442

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 33887595

VL - 279

JO - Chemosphere

JF - Chemosphere

SN - 0045-6535

M1 - 130442

ER -