Abstract
The potential release of hazardous substances from polymer-based products is currently in the focus of environmental policy. Environmental simulations are applied to expose such products to selected aging conditions and to investigate release processes. Commonly applied aging exposure types such as solar and UV radiation in combination with water contact, corrosive gases, and soil contact as well as expected general effects on polymers and additional ingredients of polymer-based products are described. The release of substances is based on mass-transfer processes to the material surfaces. Experimental approaches to investigate transport processes that are caused by water contact are presented. For tailoring the tests, relevant aging exposure types and release quantification methods must be combined appropriately. Several studies on the release of hazardous substances such as metals, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, flame retardants, antioxidants, and carbon nanotubes from polymers are summarized exemplarily. Differences between natural and artificial exposure tests are discussed and demonstrated for the release of flame retardants from several polymers and for biocides from paints. Requirements and limitations to apply results from short-term artificial environmental exposure tests to predict long-term environmental behavior of polymers are presented.
Highlights
Many materials are exposed to the ambient environment, so that there is a need to understand how such exposure might affect the environment and vice versa
Titanium dioxide can be used to accelerate the photodegradation of synthetic polymers, resulting in the release of other components or additives in the polymer with subsequent transformation processes, releasing a various number of transformation products into the environment [25,26]
The release of carbon nanotubes (CNT) due to various aging exposures was quantified by radiolabeling the CNTs [86,87]
Summary
Many materials are exposed to the ambient environment, so that there is a need to understand how such exposure might affect the environment and vice versa. A typical question, in developing a standard testing method is how to condense the time frame for a certain type of environmental exposure (such as exposure to ambient precipitation) into a time frame that is both practical and cost-effective Doing this inherently involves tradeoffs between expediency and the extent to which the resulting test fits the purpose for which it was designed. Photochemical, chemical, and biological processes have the potential to transform a chemical in a material into one or more products whose identities and properties might not be known yet, but might be of environmental concern [1,2,3] (Figure 1) Such products are often overlooked because material-testing methods are usually designed to test known (target) substances. Products or metabolites, a non-target- or suspected-target-analysis strategy is essential [9]
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