Alkylphenol ethoxylates and brominated flame retardants in water, fish (carp) and sediment samples from the Vaal River, South Africa

Abstract

Alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEs) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) are known to be bio-accumulative, persistent, and endocrine disruptors and can cause adverse health effects in animals and humans. In this study, environmental samples were collected from sites along the Vaal River, South Africa in order to determine the concentrations of APEs and BFRs in water, sediment, and fish samples. The highest concentrations of these pollutants were observed from discharge of the Rietspruit WWTW. Measurable levels of both APEs and BFRs were observed with APEs exhibiting higher concentrations than BFRs in all the matrices. The concentrations observed for APEs and BFRs were as follows: 1.00-3.85 μg/L APEs, 0.09-0.26 μg/L PBDEs, ND- 0.14 PBBs and 0.51-1.77 μg/L HBCD for water samples; 47-63 ng/g lipid APEs, 3.24-12.4 ng/g lipid PBB, 4.63-33 ng/g lipid PBDEs and 10-13 ng/g lipid HBCD for fish; and 40-184 ng/g (wet weight (ww)) APEs, 2.93-5.9 ng/g (ww) PBB, 10-24 ng/g (ww) PBDEs, and 15-52 ng/g (ww) HBCD for sediment samples. The concentrations of APEs and BFRs in water samples were found to be in the range with the results reported in the literature while the concentration in fish and sediment were lower than the concentrations reported in other studies.

Occurrence, fate and transformation of emerging contaminants in water: An overarching review of the field

“…Cleaning products used in domestic and industrial applications (detergents and soaps) can include non-ionic surfactants such as alkylphenol ethoxylates (AEOs), of which more than 90% are nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEOs) (Farré et al, 2008). Compounds of interest include 4'nonylphenol, a well-known metabolite of NPEOs which has recently been detected up to 80 ng/L in the Vaal River, South Africa (Chokwe et al, 2015).…”

Preliminary screening of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), hexabromocyclododecane (HBCDD) and tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) flame retardants in landfill leachate

“…Brominated flame retardants (BFRs) are classified as industrial chemicals with high production volume and are mainly employed for fire retardation purposes (WHO/IPCS 1994, 1997. Among these groups of chemicals, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), hexabromocyclododecane (HBCDD) and tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) have been critically evaluated due to their ubiquitous distribution in the environment (Chokwe et al 2015, Muenhor et al 2010, Zeng et al 2014. As a result of their excellent flame retardant properties, some of these chemicals are still widely used in different industrial applications (Gorga et al 2013).…”

Levels of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers in Air-Conditioner Filter Dust Used to Assess Health Risks in Clinic and Electronic Plant Employees

“…Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are a class of BFRs and man-made non-naturally occurring chemicals utilized extensively as additives in a wide variety of consumer products, such as electronic devices, vehicles, building materials, airplanes, ships, and furniture foam and upholstery. Owing to their environmental persistence and accumulation in adipose tissues, PBDEs are ubiquitous in the atmospheric environment (Chao et al, 2014a;Cincinelli et al, 2014;Zhou et al, 2014;Shy et al, 2015), in soils, sediments, and plants , water and fishes (Chokwe et al, 2015), and marine and terrestrial mammals (Leonel et al, 2014;Vetter et al, 2015). The animal studies showed that PBDEs disrupted thyroid function and spermatogenesis (Bowers et al, 2015;Huang et al, 2015), impaired mitochondrial function (Huang et al, 2015), induced hepatotoxicity (Ćurčić et al, 2015), caused developmental abnormalities (Berger et al, 2014), affects neurological behaviour (Costa and Giordano, 2011).…”