"Wherever practicable, synthetic methodologies should be designed to use and generate substances that possess little or no toxicity to human health and the environment".
[Anastas, P.T. and Warner, J.C., Green Chemistry Theory and Practice, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998 (The twelve principles of Green Chemistry)]

Within the Centre for Environmental Research and sustainable Technologies (UFT) in Bremen/Germany, a team of technicians, PhDs, post-docs and professors attempts to answer these open questions. As part of the interdisciplinary research unit “Human and Environmental Hazard Assessment” the departments of Sustainable Chemistry , General and Theoretical Ecology, Process Integrated Waste Minimisation, Chemistry and Biochemistry and Neurobiochemistry are involved. Colleagues from the Postgraduate College “ToxCom (toxic combination effect) joined our team as well.

Therefore, the group activities are based on specialised knowledge generated by the synergistic interactions of different disciplines such as biochemistry, bioorganic chemistry, environmental chemistry, risk assessment, process engineering, cell biology, ecology, eco-toxicology and soil biology.

Our Mission:

Our aim is to reconcile technological requirements of new substances like Ionic Liquids with a minimization of hazards for man and the environment. We call this approach "Sustainable Chemical Product Design". Using a combination of Thinking in Terms of Structure Activity Relationships (T-SAR), toxicological and eco-toxicological tests and modelling, this tiered strategy aims at an environmental hazard assessment of chemicals.

In a first step a test kit of compounds is selected according to their structure-activity relationship properties, a task assigned to colleagues from the infrastructural unit "T-SAR". If not commercially available these compounds are synthesized by our co-operating partners. To prove their purity, all substances are analysed within our infrastructural unit "Instrumental Analytics". Afterwards the compounds are analysed in the infrastructural unit "flexible (eco)toxicological test battery ".

Based on these results a preliminary hazard assessment is performed and potentially toxic substructures, so-called toxicophores, are identified for the molecules which have to be analysed. Using this knowledge a rational molecular design can be done by altering toxic substructures aiming at a reduction in the molecules hazard potential. These optimized substances than can be fed again into our test battery and thereby, in an iterative process, more inherently safer chemicals can be developed. In the end of this tiered testing and designing process all toxicological data are summarised to give a detailed picture in combination with exposure data for a subsequent risk analyses. This risk analysis gives an estimate of the potential risk of the compound tested in relation to well known conventional chemicals.