Development of acute toxicity quantitative structure activity relationships (QSAR) and their use in linear alkylbenzene sulfonate species sensitivity distributions.

Abstract Linear Alkylbenzene Sulfonate (LAS) is high tonnage and widely dispersed anionic surfactant used by the consumer products sector. A range of homologous structures are used in laundry applications that differ primarily on the length of the hydrophobic alkyl chain. This research summarizes the development of a set of acute toxicity QSARs (Quantitative Structure Activity Relationships) for fathead minnows ( Pimephales promelas ) and daphnids ( Daphnia magna , Ceriodaphnia dubia ) using accepted test guideline approaches. A series of studies on pure chain length LAS from C10 to C14 were used to develop the QSARs and the robustness of the QSARs was tested by evaluation of two technical mixtures of differing compositions. All QSARs were high quality (R 2 were 0.965–0.997, p