Abstract
PBDEs (Polybrominated diphenyl ethers) are one of the brominated flame retardants (BFRs), which are considered as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). PBDEs are widely used in variety of consumer products such as electronic equipments, plastics and textiles etc. PBDEs may release into the environment by vaporization or formation of dust during the manufacturing and recycling the BFRs-containing products. Their release into the environment may lead to biomagnification and accumulation in the human body. An adult on average spends about 20 h in indoor environment and 1.3 h in vehicles. Therefore, we investigated the concentration profiles of selected PBDEs in indoor and public transportation vehicles with interiors decorated with textiles and plastic substances. We collected the samples from two computer class rooms and nine highway buses by home-made passive air sampler (PAS). PAS can operate for long periods of time without any electricity, man power, and noise, yielding the time-weight average (TWA) concentration of PBDEs. We established the sampling rate of PBDEs congeners to estimate the concentration of PBDEs in the highway buses. The results show that home-made PAS can efficiently collect the analytes and exhibited increased the accumulated mass with increased time. The collected samples were extracted by Soxhlet extraction and analyzed by GC-MS. PBDEs levels in the bus and computer classroom were range in 329.3-694.9 pg/ m3 (mean 433.4 pg/ m3) and 297.2-339.7 pg/ m3 (mean 318.5 pg/ m3), respectively. In contrast to other domestic studies, we observe that the level of PBDEs present in highway buses is slightly higher. Interestingly, we find a strong relationship between some samples and decaBDE containing commercial products.