Occurrence of organophosphorus flame retardants in Xiangjiang River: Spatiotemporal variations, potential affecting factors, and source apportionment

Occurrence, Fate, and Mass Balance Analysis of Organophosphate Flame Retardants in a Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant in Hunan Province, China

“…M loss-AT = M se,effluent − M effluent (5) where C dissolved (ng/L), C adsorbed (ng/g, dw), and C sludge (ng/g, dw) are the concentrations of OPFRs in the aqueous phase, SPM, and residual sludge, respectively; Q (m 3 /d) is the daily water follow of the plant; P s (kg/d, dw) is the average daily sludge output of the plant; M influent , M se,effluent , M effluent, and M sludge (g/d) represented the mass loads of OPFRs in influent, secondary treatment effluent, tertiary treatment effluent, and residual sludge, respectively; among them, the influent, secondary treatment effluent, and tertiary treatment effluent load contain both OPFRs dissolved in water and adsorbed on suspended particles; M loss (g/d) is the mass load loss of OPFRs during the wastewater treatment process, which can be considered as the loss caused by biodegradation and/or adsorption, including the M loss-TT (the loss occurred in the traditional treatment process) and the loss M loss-AT (the loss occurred in the advanced treatment process stage). The total removal efficiency of OPFRs (R M ) could be calculated as follows:…”

“…The wastewater samples were filtered using glass fiber filters (GF/F, Whatman, Kent, UK), which were pre-treated in a muffle furnace at 450 • C for 4 h. The solid interceptions were collected as suspended particulate matter (SPM) samples and also used to further calculate the TSS. The preparation of filtered water samples was conducted according to our previous study [5] with some modifications. Briefly, the water samples with surrogate standards (TNBP-d27 and TPHP-d15) were passed through the HLB cartridges (6 mL, 200 mg, ANPEL, Shanghai, China) and the target compounds were extracted using acetonitrile from the loaded HLB cartridges.…”

“…As a result, they are widely present in a range of environmental media and even in living organisms. Numerous studies have been reported on the occurrence of OPFRs in water [4][5][6][7], air [8][9][10], dust [10][11][12], sediment [2,4,13], soil [14,15], and biota samples [16,17]. Given the high detection frequency and potential toxicity to organisms, OPFRs might pose a potential threat to ecology and humans, which need to be paid attention to.…”