Welcome to Issue 11 of Green Chemistry 

On the cover:   This month's cover illustrates the work of Dishun Zhao and colleagues, who report on the desulfurization (ODS) of diesel fuel in the presence of H202 using    Brønsted acid ionic liquid as the extractant and catalyst. You can read the accompanying paper in this issue.   

 

Hot Article: The influence of anion species on the toxicity of 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium ionic liquids observed in an (eco)toxicological test battery

This issue contains a hot article in which researchers in Germany have come up with a way of testing the ecotoxicology of different ionic liquids using an 'ecosystem in a box' to find out just how green ionic liquids really are. Bernd Jastorff at the University of Bremen and colleagues have tested the toxicological effects of a variety of ionic liquids across the range of biological complexity - from enzymes to whole organisms, of both aquatic and terrestrial origin. Previous studies on the toxicology of ionic liquids have been performed in vitro or just on single organisms, and some effects of structure on toxicity are well known, but this work represents the development of a general strategy for investigating the toxicity of ionic liquids. The team's plan is to create a well defined structure activity relationship for the toxicity of ionic liquids.