Health hazards SOLVSAFE

Sustainability being a central concept in SOLVSAFE, the project was designed to fulfil five environment, health and safety (EHS) working objectives aimed at reducing human health hazard, eco-toxicity, fossil carbon utilization and waste generation (Table 10.3). 

In a second design stage, the chemical library was evaluated with in silico health hazard estimation methods developed by lUCT and state of the art eco-tox expert systems. Prediction of the health hazard and eco-toxicological profiles and physico-chemical properties with a sufficient degree of confidence allowed selection of those molecular structures exhibiting lower levels of intrinsic hazard. Figure 10.4 shows the calculated health hazard distribution of the SOLVSAFE dataset. 

Figure 10.4 Distribution of 143 SOLVSAFE solvent candidates according to their calculated health hazard.

Figure 10.5 Classification of SOLVSAFE solvent candidates according to their elfects in five environmental, health and safety categories. Health adverse elfects according to Table 10.1. Toxicity for aquatic organisms based on LC50 96 h (fish) and ready biodegradability. VOC emission potential is considered when the vapour pressure at normal temperature is higher than 0.1 hPa. Low fire hazard is assigned whenever the flashpoint is higher than 55 °C. A low exposure potential in workplaces is considered when the vapour pressure is less than lOhPa.

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