A procedure for the assessment of the toxicity of intermediates and products formed during the accidental thermal decomposition of a chemical species.

The knowledge of the substances which form when a molecule undergoes chemical reactions under unusual conditions is required by European legislation to evaluate the risks associated with an industrial chemical process. A thermal decomposition is often the result of a loss of control of the process which leads to the formation of many substances in some cases not easily predictable. The evaluation of the change of an overall toxicity passing from the parent compound to the mixture of its thermal decomposition products has been already proposed as a practical approach to this problem when preliminary indications about the temperature range in which the molecule decomposes are available. A new procedure is proposed in this work for the obtainment of the mixtures of thermal decomposition products also when there is no previous information about the thermal behaviour of investigated molecules. A scanning calorimetric run that is aimed to identify the onset temperature of the decomposition process is coupled to an isoperibolic one in order to obtain and collect the products. An algal strain is adopted for toxicological assessments of chemical compounds and mixtures. An extension of toxicological investigations to human cells is also attempted.