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Please be aware that this old REACH registration data factsheet is no longer maintained; it remains frozen as of 19th May 2023.

The new ECHA CHEM database has been released by ECHA, and it now contains all REACH registration data. There are more details on the transition of ECHA's published data to ECHA CHEM here.

Diss Factsheets

Ecotoxicological information

Toxicity to aquatic algae and cyanobacteria

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Administrative data

Link to relevant study record(s)

Description of key information

The substance is gaseous and the primary environmental compartment to which it partition is air. The substance is not harmful to algae.

Key value for chemical safety assessment

Additional information

Chloromethane is a gaseous substance and primary environmental compartment to which it partition is air. Therefore, the substance will readily evaporate from the water body. As such significant toxicological effects on aquatic organisms are not expected. Two studies are available for freshwater algae (Bringmann and Kühn, 1976; 1980), the reported TTC (comparable to EC3) values were 550 mg/L for Microcystis aeruginosa and 1450 mg/L for Scenedesmus quadricauda but it is unclear from the description of the available studies (Bringmann and Kühn; 1976; 1980) if vessels were closed or not. Therefore and because all results are based on nominal concentration all test results should be evaluated with caution because optimum test conditions (i. e., measured concentrations, closed system) were not met and the reported results may underestimate the toxicity of the test substance. Nonetheless, reported results are comparable to the EC50 of 231 mg/L predicted by ECOSAR and the ECOSAR calculation confirmed the expectance that the substance has largely no effect on algae. The ECOSAR model is a reliable and valid QSAR model to apply to chloromethane because it is based on a related chemical dataset. All data show toxicities of chloromethane far in excess of natural occurring concentrations. The substance is not harmful to algae.