Emerging Brominated Flame Retardants in the Environment

Abstract

A number of new brominated flame retardants (BFRs) are being found in the environment but the amount of data is still very small. The best studied emerging BFRs are 1,2-bis(2,4,6-tribromophenoxy)ethane and decabromodiphenyl ethane, with some data for hexabromobenzene, pentabromoethylbenzene, pentabromotoluene, tetrabromobisphenol A derivatives, bis(2-ethylhexyl) tetrabromophthalate, 2-ethylhexyltetrabromobenzoate, 1,2-dibromo-4-(1,2-dibromoethyl) cyclohexane, and 2,4,6-tribromophenol. Very little data are available for 2,4,6-tribromophenyl allyl ether, 2,3-dibromopropyl-2,4,6-tribromophenyl ether, hexachlorocyclopentadienyldibromocyclooctane, tris(2,3-dibromopropyl) isocyanurate, tetrabromophthalic anhydride, 1,2,5,6-tetrabromocyclooctane, and octabromo-1,3,3-trimethyl-1-phenylindane. Indoor air concentrations are generally higher than outdoor air concentrations, indicating emissions from flame-retarded products. Their presence in indoor air and dust indicates possible human exposure from this pathway, but there are little human data available to determine this. The presence of several of these BFRs in fish, birds, and mammals indicates that they are bioavailable and can be absorbed and bioaccumulated. Their presence in outdoor air and in the Arctic indicates that several are capable of long range atmospheric transport. More data on these new BFRs are needed in order to determine if they pose unacceptable risks to the environment and to human health.

A mixture of the novel brominated flame retardants TBPH and TBB affects fecundity and transcript profiles of the HPGL-axis in Japanese medaka

“…Both TBPH and TBB have been listed as high production volume chemicals by the US EPA (Ma et al, 2012), and due to the phase-out of legacy BFRs, production of these two compounds is hypothesized to be increasing. In partial confirmation of this hypothesis, these compounds have been detected in a variety of abiotic and biotic matrices (Ali et al, 2012;De Wit et al, 2011;Gentes et al, 2012;Lam et al, 2009;Lee et al, 2010;Stapleton et al, 2008). TBPH and TBB have been detected in air by the Global Atmospheric Sampling Network (Lee et al, 2010), in air collected in the great lakes area of North America by the Integrated Atmospheric Deposition Network (Ma et al, 2012) and in dust in North America (Stapleton et al, 2008) and New Zealand (Ali et al, 2012).…”

“…Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), which have three technical mixtures (pentaBDE, octaBDE, and decaBDE) there has been an increase in production of novel brominated flame retardants (NBFRs). Many NBFRs are replacement compounds for PBDE formulations though in several instances their PBT (persistence, bioaccumulation, toxicity) profiles are similar to the legacy BFRs they have replaced (Covaci et al, 2011;De Wit et al, 2011).…”

A novel abbreviation standard for organobromine, organochlorine and organophosphorus flame retardants and some characteristics of the chemicals

“…Documents of particular use for identifying BFRs and CFRs were: WHO/IPCS (1994, 1995), WHO/IPCS (1997), Örn and Bergman (2004), Andersson et al (2006); Harju et al (2009), Letcher et al (2009), Covaci et al (2011), de Wit et al (2011),Sverko et al (2011); and for PFRs: van der Veen and de Boer (2012).…”

Assessing the combined influence of TOC and black carbon in soil–air partitioning of PBDEs and DPs from the Indus River Basin, Pakistan

“…Therefore, the average sampling rate of 2.7 m 3 /d was applied for PBDEs to yield volumetric concentrations. As for DPs, the particle-phase rate of 0.5 m 3 /d was used because log K OA values of these chemicals are greater than~12, and they are supposed to reside primarily in a particulate-bond form (de Wit et al, 2011).…”