Screening New Persistent and Bioaccumulative Organics in China’s Inventory of Industrial Chemicals

Over
a third of the world’s annual chemical production and
sales occur in China. Thus, knowledge of the properties of the substances
produced and emitted there is important from a global perspective.
The chemical Inventory of Existing Chemical Substances of China (IECSC)
lists over 45 000 chemicals. When compared to the North American
and European chemical inventories, 6916 substances were found to
be unique to the IECSC. We retrieved structural information for 14 938
organic chemicals in the IECSC and determined their overall environmental
persistence , bioaccumulation factor (BAF), and long-range transport
potential (transfer efficiency) using in silico approaches with the
goal of identifying new chemicals with properties that might lead
to global contamination issues. Overall, 10% of the 14 938
chemicals were unique to the IECSC and their environmental persistence
and BAF were statistically higher than the values for the rest of
the IECSC chemicals. We prioritized 27 neutral organic compounds predicted
to have prolonged environmental persistence, and high potential for
bioaccumulation and long-range transport when compared with polychlorinated
biphenyls as a benchmark. We also identified 69 organofluorine compounds
with three or more perfluorinated moieties, unique to the IECSC. Screening
approaches and results from this study help to identify and prioritize
those to be considered in further environmental modeling and monitoring
assessments.