Chirality in Environmental Toxicity and Fate Assessments

In a non-chiral environment, the enantiomers of a racemate possess the same physical and chemical properties. By contrast, metabolic and regulatory processes mediated by biological systems are sensitive to stereochemistry and different responses can often be observed when comparing the activities of a pair of enantiomers (Ali and Aboul-Enein 2004; Sanganyado et al. 2017). These differences can be expressed by distribution rates, their metabolism and excretion, in antagonistic actions relative to each other, or their toxicological properties. During the course of the last few decades, the importance of chirality was realised in many areas of science and technology including environmental science. Environmental awareness and studies are very important for all of us as we are living in this environment and our health depends entirely on the earth’s ecology. Some chiral compounds, in particular, agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals, behave in entirely different fashion when released into the environment. Therefore, the aspect of chirality in environmental assessments is very important for proper end reliable risk evaluation (Ali et al. 2000; Smith 2009; Sanganyado et al. 2017; de Albuquerque et al. 2018; Qu et al. 2019; Kaziem et al. 2020).