Table 2.

Toxicity of some reported ILs to diverse life forms

IL	Biosystem	Comment on toxicity
	Multicellular organisms: Daphnia magna, Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata, and Danio rerio.	In vivo, IL is toxic to test organisms.107
	Multicellular organism: Galleria mellonella.	In vivo study suggested dependence of toxicity on length of alkyl chain.108
	Nucleic acid: Calf thymus DNA.	In vitro study showed helical conformation remains intact.109
	Multicellular organism: Mytilus galloprovincialis	In vivo tests showed lethal and nonlethal toxic effects.110
	Prokaryotic cell: Vibrio fischeri, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, E. coli, S. aureus, B. subtilis.	In vitro tests showed toxicity to all test organisms and in some cases more toxicity than common solvents such as benzene, chloroform, methanol.101
	Eukaryotic cell: human colon carcinoma Caco‐2 cell.	In vitro tests reveal no toxic effects.41
	Prokaryotic cell: V. fischeri.	In vitro studies showed toxicity to test organism. Branching increases toxicity.111
	Enzyme, Eukaryotic cells, and multicellular organism: electric eel acetylcholinesterase, promyelocytic leukemia rat cells, Scenedesmus vacuolatus, Daphnia magna.	In vivo and in vitro studies indicated less toxic than monocationic ILs.103
	Multicellular organism: Danio rerio	In vivo, ILs are toxic to test organism with the ammonium‐based IL being more toxic than imidazolium, pyridinium, and pyrrolidinium‐IL as well as other common solvents.112