Current toxicological insights of ionic liquids on various environmental living forms

Abstract

Ionic liquids (ILs), are organic salts and have been referred to as greener solvents, oftentimes also termed designer solvents. They are separated into classes namely room temperature ILs (RTILs), task-specific ILs (TSILs), polyionic liquids (PLILs), and supported ILs, among others. ILs are used as solvents because of their low vapour pressure at room temperature as well as thermal stability. Because of their widespread applications in diverse fields, they may contribute to contaminating the land and aquatic environment as the majority of them are chemically stable. Although many researchers have labelled the ILs as green in nature there is an enormous possibility for their release into the environment in many ways. Although the variety of ILs and their synthesis are continuously increasing however scant attention has been paid to their remediation strategies; toxicological information generated in the last decade does provide a report on the impact of ILs on lower organisms and plants. Therefore, to enhance the toxicological understanding of ILs, it is a prerequisite to assemble their recent toxicological information on various living forms. This knowledge certainly will offer new clues about their interaction at the physiological and molecular scale of an organism and thus contribute to the fulfilling gap in our toxicological understanding. Hence, this review article highlights the recent toxicological impact of newly synthesized ILs on microbes, vertebrates, invertebrates, animal cells, and plants where the summarised toxicological facts have expounded the effect of ILs in dose dependent manner associated with their structure. Similarly, the impact of various ILs at the cellular level of the organism is discussed. This review also sums up the current development of computational modelling for evaluation of toxicity testing that may minimize the animal experimental dependency thus providing a future guideline in designing the greener ILs.