PT03 Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)
Exhibit Hall
8:00 AM - Tuesday
(PT030) PCBs and PBDEs in SPMDs exposed to indoor air.
Rantalainen, A.-L.1, 1 University of Helsinki, Lahti, Finland, Finland
ABSTRACT- Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) concentrations are typically higher in indoor air than in outdoor air because some materials especially in older buildings contain PCBs. Nowadays polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs) are commonly used in plastics housings of electrical equipment such as television sets and computers. In addition to that fire retardant-treated polyurethane foams are used for furniture and insulation material for building houses. Passive samplers, semipermeable membrane devices (SPMDs), were exposed to indoor air of various spaces in a large office and laboratory building. The sampling sites were a computer class, offices and laboratories. The indoor air was also sampled using an active sampling technique (polyurethane foam, PUF) to measure the actual concentrations of PCBs and PBDEs. The SPMDs were dialysed and the PUFs were extracted, the extracts faced silica gel clean up and finally the samples were analysed using GC-LRMS equipped with EI. Detection limits for PBDEs were fairly high and therefore the highly brominated PBDEs were difficult to analyse with GC-MS method. Using the concentrations both in the SPMDs and in indoor air the sampling rates of the SPMDs for PCBs and lower brominated PBDEs were estimated.
Key words: PCB, PBDE, SPMD, Indoor air