A QSAR for the hydroxyl radical reaction rate constant: Validation, domain of application, and prediction

A large number of anthropogenic organic chemicals are emitted into the troposphere. Reactions with the hydroxyl radical are a dominant removal pathway for most organic compounds, but experimentally determined gas-phase reaction rate constants are only available for about 750 compounds. The lack of experimental data increases the importance of applying structure-activity relationships (QSAR) to evaluate and predict reactivities. It is generally acknowledged that these empirical relationships are valid only within the same domain for which they were developed. However, model validation is sometimes neglected and the application domain is not always well defined. The purpose of this paper is to outline how validation and domain definition can facilitate the modeling and prediction of the hydroxyl radical reaction rates for a large database. A substantial number of theoretical descriptors (867) were generated from 2D molecular structures for compounds present in the Syracuse Research Corporation's PhysProp Database. A QSAR model was developed for the hydroxyl radical reaction rate constant using a projection-based regression technique, PLSR (partial least squares regression). The PLSR model was subsequently validated with an external test set. The main factors of variation could be attributed to two reaction pathways, hydrogen atom abstraction and addition to double bonds or aromatic systems. A set of 17 293 compounds, drawn from the PhysProp Database, was projected onto the PLSR model and 74% were inside the applicability domain. The predicted hydroxyl reaction rates for 25% of these compounds were slow or negligible, with atmospheric half-lives in the range from days to years. Finally, the list of persistent organic compounds was matched against the OECD list of High Production Volume Chemicals (HPVC). Together with the experimental data, nearly 3 three hundred compounds were identified as both persistent and in high volume production.