Bismuth chloride oxide

Endpoint summary

Additional information

Bismuth chloride oxide is very poorly soluble in water (< 1 µg/L at 22.1 °C and pH 1 with 20 mg/L loading of aqueous phase) and will be present as a solid under environmental conditions. A release into the atmosphere is not expected (a melting point of > 600°C was determined for the substance). The adsorptive properties and capacity of bismuth chloride oxide towards anions has not been examined extensively and very little information can be found in the public literature. However there are indications that BiOCl can be a good adsorbent for anions (Srivastav et al., 2013). 

From the view of bismuth as a cation, in case bismuth gets released into the environment in its ionic form through for example weathering, it will be predominantly transformed into insoluble basic salts. Bismuth is known to react fast with Fe and Mn oxides as well as organic matter (Salminen et al., 2005). A wide range of solid/solution distribution coefficients for soil were found in literature.Serne (2007) suggested aKd value of 400 L/Kg (log Kd = 2.6) as an appropriate representative value to assess risk of the element in agricultural soils. Adsorption values in sediment found in literature ranged between 1.36 and 4.5 (Fernandez-Turiel et al., 1995 and Karlsson et al., 2007).  Nevertheless, this should be considered as the worst case for bismuth chloride oxide, since the substance is poorly soluble in the water and the level of ionic bismuth released under standard environmental conditions is rather low.

References:

Fernandez-Turiel J.L., Lopez-Soler A., Llorens J.F., and Querol X., Acefiolaza P., Durand F., Lopez J.P., Medina M.E., Rossi J.N., and Toselli A. J., Saavedra J. (1995). Environmental monitoring using surface water, river sediments, and vegetation: a case study in the Famatina range, La Rioja, NW Argentina. Environment International, Vol. 21, No. 6, pp. 807-820

Karlsson S., Düker A., Grahn E. (2007).Sediment chronologies of As, Bi, and Ga in Sweden-impact of industrialisation. J Environ Sci Health A Tox Hazard Subst Environ Eng., 42(2):155-64

Salminen, R. (Chief-editor), Batista, M.J., Bidovec, M. Demetriades, A., De Vivo. B., De Vos, W., Duris, M., Gilucis, A., Gregorauskiene, V., Halamic, J., Heitzmann, P., Lima, A., Jordan, G., Klaver, G., Klein, P., Lis, J., Locutura, J., Marsina, K., Mazreku, A., O'Connor, P.J., Olsson, S.Å., Ottesen, R.-T., Petersell, V., Plant, J.A., Reeder, S., Salpeteur, I., Sandström, H., Siewers, U., Steenfelt, A., Tarvainen, T. (2005). Geochemical Atlas of Europe. Part 1 – Background Information, Methodology and Maps. Geological Survey of Finland, Espoo, Finland, 526 pp. ISBN 951-690-921-3 [also available at:http://www.gtk.fi/publ/foregsatlas/].

Serne J.R, (2007).Kd Values for Agricultural and Surface Soils for Use in Hanford Site Farm, Residential, and River Shoreline Scenarios, Technical Report for Groundwater Protection Project --Characterization of Systems Task

Srivastav A.L., Singh P. K., Weng C. H., Sharma Y. C. (2015). Novel Adsorbent Hydrous Bismuth Oxide for the Removal of Nitrate from Aqueous Solutions. Journal of Hazardous, Toxic, and Radioactive Waste/Volume 19 Issue 2