Investigation of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers in Wastewater Treatment Plants Along the U.S.and Mexico Border: a Trans-boundary Study

Use of microextraction by packed sorbents following selective pressurised liquid extraction for the determination of brominated diphenyl ethers in sewage sludge by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry

“…Results are shown in Table 3. As expected from the review of previously reported data [1,5,6,28], the highest concentrations of the selected BDEs were for tetra-and penta-BDE. Total BDE concentration ranged from 16.2 to 45.6 ng g −1 dw.…”

“…In this work, the LODs were significantly improved, from 0.4 to 2 pg mL −1 for BDE-28 and BDE-100, respectively. The limits of detection of the developed method are significantly lower than those previously reported for the determination of BDEs in sewage sludge [3,21,6]. This is evidence of the suitability of MEPS technique for the decrease of the limit of detection due to the concentration performed in the cartridge.…”

“…This is within the concentration ranges previously reported for the same tetra to hexa BDEs in sewage sludge samples. In Mexico [6], the total BDE-concentration in sludge was from non-detected up to 1303 ng g −1 . In Sweden, levels from 18 to 260 ng g −1 of total BDEs were found [1], but the highest concentrations of BDEs in sewage sludge were previously reported in the United States, with levels up to 2086 ng g −1 dw [29] and 2290 ng g −1 dw [30].…”

“…However, it is a difficult task due to the complexity of the matrix which contains a wide variety of compounds that can act as interference in the analysis. Several methods for the determination of BDEs in sewage sludge have been reported, using microwave assisted extraction (MAE) [3], pressurised liquid extraction (PLE) [4,5] or ultrasound solid liquid extraction [6] as the extraction step, usually followed by a clean-up step such as solid phase extraction (SPE) [3][4][5]. The clean-up step is mandatory to eliminate matrix components which can be co-eluted with the target analytes and interfere with their detection, and to avoid contamination and damage of the chromatographic system by sample matrix components.…”

“…Besides, the automation of these techniques usually requires additional instrumentation. Green approaches in sample preparation techniques, such as SPME [9], LPME [10,11] or SBSE [6], have been used in recent years for the analysis of BDEs. As an alternative to these sorptive microextraction techniques, microextraction by packed sorbents (MEPS), introduced by Abdel-Rehim [12], is a miniaturised solid-phase extraction connected on-line with LC or GC.…”