Abstract
House dust is the main source of human exposure to flame retardants by ingestion. This study investigated the occurrence of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in indoor dust from 22 houses in Shanghai, China. House dust was separately collected from the floor and elevated furnishings surface (mostly between 0.5 and 2 m height) for comparison. The concentrations of ∑22 PBDEs ranged from 19.4 to 3280 ng/g (with a geometric mean of 203 ng/g) and from 55.1 to 792 ng/g (with a geometric mean of 166 ng/g) in floor dust (FD) and elevated surface dust (ESD), respectively. BDE-209 was the predominant congener, accounting for about 73.1% of total PBDE burdens. In terms of congener profiles, the comparison of FD and ESD revealed no significant differences except for the ratio of BDE-47/BDE-99. ESD samples displayed a ratio of BDE-47/BDE-99 very similar to commercial penta-BDE products DE-71 while the ratio in FD was exceptionally higher. Significant correlation was found between concentrations of commercial penta-BDE compositions in FD and ESD (p < 0.05). Except for some occasional values, PBDE levels in house dust exhibited temporal stability. Human exposure to PBDEs via dust ingestion was estimated. The highest daily intake of PBDEs was for toddlers by using 95th percentile concentrations of PBDEs via high dust ingestion in FD (23.07 ng/kg bw/day). About 20-fold difference in exposure estimates between toddlers and adults supports that toddlers are facing greater risk from indoor floor dust. Expectedly, this study highlighted the point that residents in Shanghai were exposed to low doses of PBDEs in house dust.
Highlights
IntroductionThere is no consolidated standard method for sampling indoor dust to assess human exposure risk of Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). Without considering the potential influence of dust type or sampling elevation, most studies usually collect mixed house dust (mostly floor dust) by vacuum cleaners to roughly represent the whole house dust (Thuresson et al 2012; Hoffman et al 2015; Coelho et al 2016; He et al 2017)
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are a group of anthropogenic organic compounds, which have been widelyResponsible editor: Constantini SamaraElectronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.Environ Sci Pollut Res (2018) 25:18049–18058Indoor microenvironment, where people spend over 80% time in their lives (Johnson-Restrepo and Kannan 2009), represents a main source of flame retardants
Elevated surface dust (ESD) samples were collected in every house by naturally falling into a 20 × 20 cm salver covered by aluminum foil
Summary
There is no consolidated standard method for sampling indoor dust to assess human exposure risk of PBDEs. Without considering the potential influence of dust type or sampling elevation, most studies usually collect mixed house dust (mostly floor dust) by vacuum cleaners to roughly represent the whole house dust (Thuresson et al 2012; Hoffman et al 2015; Coelho et al 2016; He et al 2017). Few studies compared the levels of PBDEs in indoor dust collected at different heights. It is necessary to compare PBDEs in house dust of different heights, and assess human exposure risks of PBDEs for both toddlers and adults. Temporal variation may influence the levels and fates of PBDEs in indoor dust and influence the human exposure. No significant trends were corroborated owing to comparatively short sampling period and limited samples
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