Linking PBDEs in house dust to consumer products using X-ray fluorescence

Please consider this abstract for the Environment Section's Student Achievement Award.

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are commonly used as flame retardants in household consumer products. In principle, it should be possible to link PBDE concentrations in air and dust samples collected from indoor spaces to the consumer products in those spaces. However, the attempts of several groups to do so have resulted in only modest success. We have therefore employed an innovative approach for obtaining a surrogate PBDE measure: testing for bromine using X-ray fluorescence (XRF). A lab-based validation of the XRF method and a field investigation of PBDEs using the XRF in residential settings were conducted. Household dust and furniture foam samples were analyzed for 36 PBDE congeners via gas chromatograph coupled to an Agilent 5975 mass spectrometer (GC/MS).

XRF measured bromine and GC/MS quantified PBDEs in chair foam samples were strongly correlated (r=0.98). These results suggest that XRF can reliably measure bromine as a surrogate for PBDEs in and chair foam. We found that XRF-measured bromine in furniture was strongly and significantly correlated with penta-product BDEs in dust (r=0.59, p<0.001). XRF-measured bromine in electronics and deca-product BDEs in dust were moderately correlated for both the bedroom (r=0.40, p=0.1) and main living area (r=0.38, p=0.1). The XRF method is easy, fast, and appears to be a promising surrogate measure for PBDE content, producing estimates of bromine source strength that can be linked to PBDEs in dust collected from the same rooms.