Prediction of Environmental Fate of Certain Chemicals Using Computer Simulation Programs

Computer Program을 이용한 화학물질의 환경동태 예측

Environmental hazards of a chemical could be assessed by two different approaches : toxicity test and assessment of exposure potentials to human and environmental organisms. For the prediction of environmental fate of chemicals three available computer programs were compared each other and were verified. The results obtained by using these computer programs, PCHEM, EXAMS, and E4CHEM were summarized as follows. The estimated octanol/water partition coefficients by PCHEM were similar to the experimental values in the literature. But the other factors, water solubility and vapor pressure were different from the data in the literature. The simulation results of selected compounds by EXAMS showed similar tendency to the literature results of model field environment. Therefore, this computer program could be utilized to predict the environmental fate of chemicals. E4CHEM program is very simple and this program could predict the ultimate environmental fate of stable chemicals by input of two or three parameters. However, the validity should further be verified in the future field study using more compounds. It is suggested that these approaches could be fully utilized by understanding their limitations to predict the environmental fate of new chemicals under development, to screen the potential environmental pollutants among chemicals already-in use, and to devise measures to minimize the hazards to the environment.