ABSTRACT
The fourth principle of green chemistry states that “chemical products should be designed to effect their desired function while minimizing their toxicity hazards”. Among the 12 principles of green chemistry it is the least developed since the introduction of the green chemistry concept. The reason why it is not easy to design safer chemicals is due to the amount of requirements that must be met, for this reason it is necessary to understand the relationship between structural and energetic characteristics with chemical hazards. In the last decade, experimental chemical and toxicological data banks have been generated, they allow a partial overview of the relationship between the chemical molecule structures with their activity and toxicity, which have led to formulating some rules and principles that allow proposing molecular designs. Sometimes a chemical compound may have low or no toxicity, however, the degradation products through metabolism in humans or bacteria in the environment, can lead to the formation of highly toxic compounds.
