Brominated flame retardant emissions from the open burning of five plastic wastes and implications for environmental exposure in China

Overview and Perspectives on Emissions of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers on a Global Basis: Evaporative and Fugitive Releases from Commercial PBDE Mixtures and Emissions from Combustion Sources

“…Then assuming 21% of WEEE weight as plastic parts (Ongondo et al, 2011), transfer factor of BFR in use phase to open burning as 0.05 (Schenker et al, 2008), and the percentage of PBDE production to all BFR (10.6%) (Lassen et al, 2014) as the percentage of using commercial PBDE mixtures as BFR in plastic parts, we estimate that the plastic amounts of global PBDE-containing e-waste treated by illegal open burning was 55600 tonnes in 2016. Two studies reported PBDE emission factors of open burning of plastic wastes and high-impact polystyrene under thermal stress (Ortuño et al, 2015;Ni et al, 2016), and the PBDE emission factors were 4586.8 mg tonne-plastic -1 waste (Ni et al, 2016) and 70000-130000 mg tonne-plastic -1 waste (Ortuño et al, 2015), respectively, which ranged in one-order difference. We estimated the range of global PBDE emissions from illegal open burning recycling activities to be 0.255-5.56 tonnes in 2016 by using the emission factors, 4586.8 mg tonne-plastic -1 waste (Ni et al, 2016) and 100000 mg tonne-plastic -1 waste (mean value) (Ortuño et al, 2015).…”

“…Two studies reported PBDE emission factors of open burning of plastic wastes and high-impact polystyrene under thermal stress (Ortuño et al, 2015;Ni et al, 2016), and the PBDE emission factors were 4586.8 mg tonne-plastic -1 waste (Ni et al, 2016) and 70000-130000 mg tonne-plastic -1 waste (Ortuño et al, 2015), respectively, which ranged in one-order difference. We estimated the range of global PBDE emissions from illegal open burning recycling activities to be 0.255-5.56 tonnes in 2016 by using the emission factors, 4586.8 mg tonne-plastic -1 waste (Ni et al, 2016) and 100000 mg tonne-plastic -1 waste (mean value) (Ortuño et al, 2015). Table 5 compares the global PBDE emissions from fugitive releases from commercial PBDE mixtures, from illegal open burning of WEEE and e-waste, and from combustion sources.…”

“…Sakai et al (2001) incinerated three types of waste samples containing BFR, and found increases of PBDE concentrations in more than half of the runs, suggesting possible PBDE formations occurred during the flue gas cooling process. Ni et al (2016) selected five plastic wastes to investigate BFR emission behaviors during open burning, and found the formation and survival of PBDEs exceeded their decomposition during the burns, that is, output/input mass ratios > 1. However, similar phenomenon can not be observed in the experiments for hexabromocyclododecanes (HBCDs).…”

“…Average from fuel power plants (Wang et al, 2010b) Boilers (wood chips) 0.346 mg tonne-fuel -1 (Wang et al, 2010b) Boilers (wood chips) 0.0397 mg tonne-fuel -1 (Chang et al, 2013) Boilers ( Average from UGFV and DFV emissions (Wang et al, 2010b) non-controlled combustion sources Rice straw open burning 26.5 mg tonne-waste -1 recalculate the emission factors in Chang et al (2014a) by using the ultimate analysis data (C: 44.2%) in Worasuwannarak et al (2007) Plastic waste open burning 775 mg tonne-plastic waste -1 (Ni et al, 2016) difference between emission factor approach (52.6 kg year -1 ) and GM PBDEs:PCDD/Fs I-TEQ ratio approach (28.6 kg year -1 ) was much less than an order. Applying the PBDEs:PCDD/Fs I-TEQ ratios to estimate PBDE emissions from widely available PCDD/F inventories is suggested as a preliminary and easier method for evaluating global PBDE emissions from combustion sources (Wang et al, 2010b).…”

“…Some studies even indicated that PBDEs can be formed during combustion (Sakai et al, 2001;Wang et al, 2010b;Artha et al, 2011;Ni et al, 2016) and measured in the flue gas of combustion sources that their fuels contained no commercial PBDE mixtures (Wang et al, 2010b;Chang et al, 2014b, c;Chen et al, 2017). PBDE emissions from combustion sources were not included in the mentioned PBDE inventory and estimation, maybe because these emissions used to be believed to be much smaller than the evaporative releases from PBDE-containing products (Prevedouros et al, 2004;Sakai et al, 2006).…”