Mechanism and prediction of nonspecific toxicity to fish using bioconcentration characteristics.

A basic theory of nonspecific toxicity has been developed using bioconcentration as a basis and applying kinetic relationships developed in previous work. This approach has involved calculation of the critical volume fraction and critical concentration in lipid tissue of fish for a variety of organic compounds at the lethal level. Corrections to previous data sets for time period of exposure and inclusion of biodegradable compounds did not make a significant improvement in the values obtained. A new data base with compounds containing a wide range of Kow values gave results for critical volume and concentration similar to previous work. The influence of experimental procedures and methods for data development are considered. The basic theoretical derivation developed was found to provide a basis for predicting the approximate nonspecific toxicity of nondegradable lipophilic organic compounds at different exposure time periods. This requires a knowledge of the Kow value and the clearance rate constant (k2) which can be calculated from the Kow value.