Inhibition of bioluminescence in Photobacterium phosphoreum (the Microtox test) has been proposed as a cost-effective prescreening procedure to eliminate the relatively more innocuous chemicals from testing programs for toxicities of organic chemicals to fish. The biological response, as a function of toxicant properties, is given by log EC/sub 50/ (in ..mu..molL) = 7.61 - 4.11 anti V100 - 1.54 ..pi..* + 3.94..beta.. - 1.51..cap alpha../sub m/ n = 38, r = 0.987, SD = 0.28 where anti V is the solute molar volume and ..pi..*, ..beta.., and ..cap alpha../sub m/ are the solvatochromic parameters that measure dipolaritypolarizability, hydrogen-bond acceptor basicity, and hydrogen-bond donor acidity of the solute (toxicant). The above equation applies to compounds that act by a nonreactive toxicity mechanism, and it is suggested that for certain compounds, which are outliers relative to the above equation, reactive toxicity properties mask the effects of the nonreactive mechanism. The above equation is compared with a correlation of log EC/sub 50/ with octanolwater partition coefficients. 25 references, 2 figures, 2 tables.