More than twenty new alternative methods for bromination of alkenes have been evaluated taking into consideration their resource demands, waste production as well as environmental, health and safety aspects. The cost of bromine and the substances designated to circumvent the application of molecular bromine have also been taken into account. As bromine is only one of several problematic substan...

Organohalogen compounds are some of the most notorious persistent pollutants disturbing the Earth biosphere. Although human-made, these chemicals are not completely alien to living systems. A large number of natural organohalogens, part of the secondary metabolism, are involved in chemical trophic interactions. Surprisingly, the relationship between organisms' trophic position and synthetic org...

The excited-state dynamics of a series of electron donor-acceptor bridged systems (DABS) consisting of a boron-dipyrromethene chromophore covalently linked to a dinitro-substituted triptycene has been investigated using femtosecond time-resolved spectroscopy. The chromophores differ by the number of bromine atom substituents. The fluorescence lifetime of the DABS without any bromine atom is str...

Halogenated gomisin J (a derivative of lignan compound), represented by the bromine derivative 1506 [(6R, 7S, S-biar)-4,9-dibromo-3,10-dihydroxy-1,2,11,12-tetramethoxy-6, 7-dimethyl-5,6,7,8- tetrahydrodibenzo[a,c]cyclo-octene], was found to be a potent inhibitor of the cytopathic effects of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) on MT-4 human T cells (50% effective dose, 0.1 to 0.5 microM)...

Decabromodiphenyl ether (BDE-209) is a major component of a commercial flame retardant formulation; however, there is limited information on the fate of BDE-209 in the environment, including metal oxide mediated degradation. Laboratory experiments were conducted to investigate the birnessite (delta-MnO(2))-promoted debromination of BDE-209 in tetrahydrofuran (THF)-water systems as well as catec...