Summary:
Flame retardants (FRs) are used since decades as additives in a great variety
of everyday life products to prevent the expansion of fires in indoor
environments. After banning most of brominated flame retardants due to the
increasing number of studies showing their adverse effects to the environment
and human health, organophosphorus flame retardants (PFRs) started taking their
place in the market.
In the current study, three slightly different methods for the simultaneous
determination of fourteen of the most used FRs in waste water, sediment and
indoor dust were developed and validated. The PFRs measured were the following:
tri-iso-butyl phosphate (TiBP), Tri-n-butyl phosphate (TnBP),
Tris-(2-chloroehtyl) phosphate (TCEP), Tris-(2-chloropropyl) phosphate (TCPP),
Tris-(dichloro-propyl) phosphate (TDCPP), Tricresyl phosphate (TCP), Tri-phenyl
phosphate (TPP), Tris-(butoxyethyl) phosphate (TBEP), Tris-(2ehtylhexyl)
phosphate (TEHP), 2-ethylhexydiphenyl phosphate (EHDP),
Resorcinol-bis(diphenyl phosphate) (RDP), Bisphenol A bis diphenyl phosphate
(BDP), 9,10-diydro-9-oxa-10-phosphatphenanthrene-10-oxide (DOPO) and the
brominated flame retardant
2,3,4,5,6-Pentabromo-1-(2,3,4,5,6-pentabromophenoxy)benzene (BDE 209,
commercial name deca-BDE).
The determination was accomplished in all cases by LC or GC-MS (time of flight
and triple quadrupole were used as mass analyzers). Different pretreatment
steps were followed for water, sediment and dust samples. Water samples were
subjected to Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) clean up before the injection to the
chromatograph, sediment samples were first subjected to Accelerated Solvent
Extraction (ASE) and then to SPE and dust samples to ultrasound extraction.
The linearity, repeatability, recovery and limits of detection and
quantification were calculated for water and dust methods with more details,
but not for sediment method because the recoveries from the matrix were not so
good for all the compounds.
Keywords:
Flame retardants, Organophosphate esters, Waste waters, Indoor dust, Liquid and gas chromatography tandem mass spectrometry
