Acute lethal toxicity of some environmental pollutants including chlorophenol, haloalkane, quinone and substituted nitrobenzene (i.e. nitrophenol, nitrobenzene, nitrotoluene and aniline) compounds to aquatic organisms and the high performance liquid chromatograph relative retention times (HPLC-RRTs) of these compounds were determined.  Toxicity of the chemical to organisms was performed with chlorella, daphnia, carp and tilapia.  Retention time was determined by HPLC with the mobile phase of methanol + water (6:4, v/v) and acetonitrile + water (8:2, v/v) through RP-18 column.  For chlorophenols, toxicity seems not relative to the number of chlorine atoms attached on benzene ring, but mono-chlorine phenol showed the lower activity than that of multi-chlorine attached.  For haloalkane, the tolerance levels of daphnia and carp were found higher than that of chlorella, the toxicity to chlorella was found several hundred times greater than that to daphnia.  Naphthoquinone compounds had a higher toxicity to chlorella and carp than anthraquinone.  Substituting with mono-chlorine on anthraquinone ring showed lower toxicity to carp, but substituting with amine, hydroxyl and di-chlorine on ring had a higher toxicity.  1,4-Dinitrobenzene and 2,3,4,5-tetrachloronitrobenzene had a extreme toxicity to daphnia and carp.  Nitrobenzene compounds with an additional substituted group on the p-position showed extreme toxicity to daphnia and carp.  However, acute lethal toxicity can not be predicted directly and simply by the HPLC-RRTs.

 

Key words: acute toxicity, aquatic organisms, environmental pollutants, HPLC-RRTs