Indoor organophosphate and polybrominated flame retardants in Tokyo

Abstract

Polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) are commonly used as flame retardants in plastics. The use of these two compounds in electric appliances will be banned in 2007 by the EU Directives on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances (RoHS) in electrical and electronic equipment. In Japan, the use of PBB was banned and that of PBDE diminished in the early 1990s by the self-imposed controls of the Japanese Flame Retardants Conference (Akutu and Hori, 2004). In Japan, the predominantly used organic flame retardants were tetrabromobisphenol A and organophosphate compounds. Tetrabromobisphenol A has been reported to disrupt endocrine systems (Kitamura et al., 2005), and some organophosphate flame retardants were recently reported to have neurochemical hazardous effects. Furthermore, organophosphate compounds were suspected to cause endocrine-disrupting effects (Fang et al., 2003; Ohyama et al., 2005) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Winrow et al., 2003). In this study, organophosphate and polybrominated flame retardants were surveyed in indoor environments in Tokyo.

Tobacco smoke aging in the presence of ozone: A room-sized chamber study

“…13674-84-5). These compounds are present in the formulation of flame retardants, can be emitted from indoor furnishings and electrical equipment, and have 18 been reported in indoor air and dust (Staaf and Ostman 2005;Saito et al 2007). …”

Distribution of organophosphorus flame retardants in sediments from the Pearl River Delta in South China

“…As most PFRs are added to and mixed with, rather than chemically bound to the materials (van der Veen and de Boer, 2012), leaching could occur throughout the lifetime (Marklund et al, 2003) of these products. Reports have indicated that PFRs were ubiquitous in various environmental media, such as water (Chung and Ding, 2009;Bacaloni et al, 2008), air (Carlsson et al, 1997;Saito et al, 2007), dust (He et al, 2015;Stapleton et al, 2009), sediment Ricking et al, 2003), soil (Mihajlovic et al, 2011), and biota samples (Kim et al, 2011;Sundkvist et al, 2010). Furthermore, some of the harmful effects of PFRs on human health cannot be ignored.…”

Detection and intake assessment of organophosphate flame retardants in house dust in Japanese dwellings

“…To examine the background levels of PFRs from materials used for sampling, the vacuum dust bag and the ethanol-soaked cotton used to wipe the vacuum nozzle were extracted with acetone and analyzed by GC/MS to confirm that there were no PFRs peaks (data not shown). Thus, the background level of PFRs was negligible, as described previously (Kanazawa et al, 2010;Saito et al, 2007).…”

“…TPHP and TCEP are emitted from televisions and computers (Carlsson et al, 2000;Hartmann et al, 2004;Saito et al, 2007). 3.7. Comparison of the results of this study with those of previous studies Table 6 shows the concentrations of PFRs in this study compared with those in previous studies of private homes because PFR concentrations can vary depending on the sampling site (Bergh et al, 2011;Van den Eede et al, 2011).…”

“…However, TCEP is currently being replaced by other flame retardants, primarily TCIPP (Marklund et al, 2005), because TCEP has neurotoxic and carcinogenic properties in rats (WHO, 1998). In Japan, production of TCEP had largely decreased by the early 2000s, which was about 10 years before this survey (Saito et al, 2007). To investigate the influence of the decrease in production, we analyzed the correlation between TCEP concentrations and building age ≤10 years and more than 10 years.…”