How can we ensure chemicals degrade safely in the environment?
Ensuring that chemicals degrade safely involves designing them to break down into harmless byproducts. This can be achieved by incorporating biodegradability into the molecular design. Chemicals should ideally degrade under environmental conditions (e.g., sunlight, microbial activity) into substances that do not persist or bioaccumulate in the ecosystem. Environmental toxicology plays a key role in understanding how chemicals interact with and impact the environment.
