No abstract

Current environmental monitoring studies are generally confined to several target organophosphate esters (OPEs), and there is a lack of strategies for comprehensively screening all potential OPEs in environmental samples.Here, an effective and accurate strategy was developed for the target, suspect, and functional group-dependent screening of OPEs by the use of ultrahighperformance liquid chromatography−Q Exactive hybrid quadrupole−Orbitrap high-resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC-Q-Orbitrap HRMS), and this strategy was applied for the analysis of n = 74 sediment samples (including 23 surface sediment samples and 51 sediment core samples) collected from Taihu Lake (eastern China) in 2019. In these analyzed samples, we successfully identified n = 35 OPEs, and 23 of them were reported in this region for the first time. In addition, this strategy also presented other interesting findings, i.e., (1) OPE concentrations decreased with increasing distance from the coast of the lake; (2) the newly identified 3-hydroxyphenyl diphenyl phosphate (meta-OH-TPHP) was not statistically significantly correlated with triphenyl phosphate (TPHP; r = 0.02494, p = 0.9101) but with resorcinol bis(diphenyl phosphate) (RDP) (r = 0.9271, p < 0.0001) and three other OPEs; and (3) the summed concentrations of aryl OPEs (∑ aryl OPEs) in sediment core samples exhibited significantly increasing trends as the depth decreased. Collectively, this study provided an effective strategy that was successfully applied for comprehensive screening of OPEs in the sediments of Taihu Lake, and this strategy could have promising potential to be extended to other environmental matrices or samples.

There is a dearth of information regarding the pollution status of emerging organophosphate esters (OPEs) in wild fish. Here, we optimized and validated a quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe (QuEChERS) pretreatment method, which was further applied for target, suspect, and nontarget screening of OPEs in n = 48 samples of wild fishes from Taihu Lake (eastern China). This integrated technique allows us to fully identify 20 OPEs, and 9 out of them are emerging OPEs detected in wild fish for the first time. Importantly, some of the emerging OPEs, i.e., tris­(2,4-di-tert-butylphenyl) phosphate (TDtBPP), 4-tert-butylphenyl diphenyl phosphate (BPDP), and 2-isopropylphenyl diphenyl phosphate (IPDP), exhibited greater or at least comparable contamination levels as compared to traditional ones. There were no statistically significant interspecies (n = 6) differences regarding OPE concentrations. However, we observed significant differences on OPE concentrations among different tissues of silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix), for which the intestine has the highest OPE mean concentration (46.5 ng/g wet weight (ww)), followed by the liver (20.1 ng/g ww) ≈ brain (20.0 ng/g ww) > gill (14.8 ng/g ww) > muscle (11.4 ng/g ww). An interesting exception is IPDP, which presents an unexpectedly high concentration in the brain (0.510 ng/g ww). Collectively, this study expands our understanding of OPE contamination in wild fish and clearly shows that emerging TDtBPP, IPDP, and BPDP could play an equally important role as traditional OPEs in contribution of OPE pollution in wild fish samples.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract