Man-made chemicals found in remote areas of the world: The experimental definition for POPs

Ballschmiter, Karlheinz; Hackenberg, Rudolf; Jarman, Walter M.; Looser, Ralf

doi:10.1007/bf02987503

Cited by 38 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 212 publications

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“…PBDEs are lipophilic and hydrophobic compounds that tend to persist in the environment, bioaccumulate, and be globally transported due to their resistance to chemical, physical and biological transformations (Deng et al, 2007; Vives et al, 2007); thus, PBDEs can be considered persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, many of which are targeted for global elimination (Ballschmite et al, 2002). There are 209 PBDE congeners, named according to the total number of bromines off the phenyl rings.…”

Section: Sources Measured Air Concentrations and Potential Healtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Endocrine disrupting chemicals in indoor and outdoor air

Rudel

Perovich

2009

Atmospheric Environment

461

290

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The past 50 years have seen rapid development of new building materials, furnishings, and consumer products and a corresponding explosion in new chemicals in the built environment. While exposure levels are largely undocumented, they are likely to have increased as a wider variety of chemicals came into use, people began spending more time indoors, and air exchange rates decreased to improve energy efficiency. As a result of weak regulatory requirements for chemical safety testing, only limited toxicity data are available for these chemicals. Over the past 15 years, some chemical classes commonly used in building materials, furnishings, and consumer products have been shown to be endocrine disrupting chemicals-that is they interfere with the action of endogenous hormones. These include PCBs, used in electrical equipment, caulking, paints and surface coatings; chlorinated and brominated flame retardants, used in electronics, furniture, and textiles; pesticides, used to control insects, weeds, and other pests in agriculture, lawn maintenance, and the built environment; phthalates, used in vinyl, plastics, fragrances, and other products; alkylphenols, used in detergents, pesticide formulations, and polystyrene plastics; and parabens, used to preserve products like lotions and sunscreens. This paper summarizes reported indoor and outdoor air concentrations, chemical use and sources, and toxicity data for each of these chemical classes. While industrial and transportationrelated pollutants have been shown to migrate indoors from outdoor sources, it is expected that indoor sources predominate for these consumer product chemicals; and some studies have identified indoor sources as the predominant factor influencing outdoor ambient air concentrations in densely populated areas. Mechanisms of action, adverse effects, and dose-response relationships for many of these chemicals are poorly understood and no systematic screening of common chemicals for endocrine disrupting effects is currently underway, so questions remain as to the health impacts of these exposures. Keywordsindoor environment; flame retardants; plastics; exposure; toxicology BackgroundThe rapid development of new building materials, furnishings, and consumer products over the past 50 years has resulted in a corresponding increase in new chemicals in the built environment (Weschler, Under review). Indoor concentrations are largely uncharacterized, but they have likely increased over time as a wider variety of chemicals are used and air exchange rates in buildings decrease to improve energy efficiency (Weschler, Under review). Chemical concentrations are often highest indoors because many of the sources are indoors and because 1Corresponding author: Tel.: 617-332-4288. Email address: rudel@silentspring.org. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, ...

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Section: Sources Measured Air Concentrations and Potential Healtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Endocrine disrupting chemicals in indoor and outdoor air

Rudel

Perovich

2009

Atmospheric Environment

461

290

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“…Most people live a sustainable agricultural, fishing or hunting existence and this paradigm of living results in little global influence [8,9,14]. However, global issues do impact on the villages, as their water is potentially contaminated with various imported manufactured substances including fertilizers, heavy metals, herbicides, insecticides, and pharmaceutics [15,16]. Despite billions of dollars in aid, technology transfer, and local spending, inadequate progresses have been made in recent years in improving access to safe drinking water in the developing world [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metallic iron for safe drinking water worldwide

Noubactep¹

2010

Chemical Engineering Journal

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a b s t r a c tA new concept for household and large-scale safe drinking water production is presented. Raw water is successively filtered through a series of sand and iron filters. Sand filters mostly remove suspended particles (media filtration) and iron filters remove anions, cations, micro-pollutants, natural organic matter, and micro-organisms including pathogens (reactive filtration). Accordingly, treatment steps conventionally achieved with flocculation, sedimentation, rapid sand filtration, activated carbon filtration, and disinfection are achieved in the new concept in only two steps. To prevent bed clogging, Fe 0 is mixed with inert materials, yielding Fe 0 /sand filters. Efficient water treatment in Fe 0 /sand filters has been extensively investigated during the past two decades. Two different contexts are particularly important in this regard: (i) underground permeable reactive barriers and (ii) household water filters. In these studies, the process of aqueous iron corrosion in a packed bed was proven very efficient for unspecific aqueous contaminant removal. Been based on a chemical process (iron corrosion), efficient water treatment in Fe 0 beds is necessarily coupled with a slow flow rate. Therefore, for large communities several filters should work in parallel to produce enough water for storage and distribution. It appears that water filtration through Fe 0 /sand filters is an efficient, affordable, a flexible technology for the whole world.

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“…The selection of the BCF as a metric for bioaccumulation was the result of an assessment of the properties that these initial POPs had in common, based on data primarily available for aquatic food webs. Threshold values were then selected, somewhat arbitrarily it seems, based on the minimum BCF values measured for the operationally defined POPs . Because of this history, a problem arises when trying to apply the BCF metric and threshold values to new chemicals: the original POPs are all neutral, nonpolar, lipophilic chemicals; but many chemicals in commerce are not.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elimination half‐life as a metric for the bioaccumulation potential of chemicals in aquatic and terrestrial food chains

Goss

Brown

Endo

2013

Enviro Toxic and Chemistry

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The assessment of chemicals as bioaccumulative in the regulatory process makes use of the bioconcentration factor as a metric. However, this metric does not account for the dietary uptake route and therefore cannot be applied to terrestrial food chains. In recent years, the biomagnification factor (BMF) and the trophic magnification factor (TMF) have been suggested as standard metrics for bioaccumulation. For regulatory purposes, though, the BMF and the TMF also suffer from a number of shortcomings. They are not applicable to assess uptake routes other than the diet (e.g., dermal uptake, as is important for personal care products). When measured in the field, they depend largely on biological and ecological factors and less so on the chemical's properties, and they are difficult to normalize and standardize. In the present study, the authors suggest the elimination half-life (EL0.5 ) of a chemical as an alternative metric for bioaccumulation. The EL0.5 is equivalent to the depuration rate constant (k2 ) that is measured in various bioaccumulation and bioconcentration tests. This metric can be applied to air- and water-breathing animals, and it is valuable for all uptake routes. It has a number of practical advantages over the BMF and the TMF. In combination with a standard uptake scenario, the EL0.5 can also be linked directly to a BMF threshold of unity. Thus, the EL0.5 as a bioaccumulation metric overcomes the shortcomings of the BMF and the TMF while still conserving the advantages of the latter metrics.

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Man-made chemicals found in remote areas of the world: The experimental definition for POPs

Cited by 38 publications

References 212 publications

Endocrine disrupting chemicals in indoor and outdoor air

Endocrine disrupting chemicals in indoor and outdoor air

Metallic iron for safe drinking water worldwide

Elimination half‐life as a metric for the bioaccumulation potential of chemicals in aquatic and terrestrial food chains

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