Measurement report: Seasonal, distribution and sources of organophosphate esters in PM<sub>2.5</sub> from an inland urban city in southwest China

Abstract

Abstract. Organophosphate esters (OPEs) are emerging contaminants in recent years and studies concluded that urban centers were a significant source of OPEs. Samples were collected from six ground-based sites located in Chengdu, a typical fast developing metropolitan of southwest China and were analyzed for seven OPEs in atmospheric PM2.5. The concentrations of Σ7OPEs in PM2.5 ranged from 5.83 to 6.91 ng m−3, with a mean of 6.6 ± 3.3 ng m−3, and the primary pollutants were TBEP, TnBP, TCEP and TCPP which made up more than 80 % in the Σ7OPEs. The concentrations of Σ7OPEs were higher in autumn/winter than that in summer. Nonparametric test showed that there was no significant difference in Σ7OPEs concentrations among the six sampling sites, but the occurence of unexpected high level of individual OPEs at different sites in autumn might indicate that there was a noteworthy emission. Very strong correlation (R2 = 0.98, p

Pollution Characteristics and Emissions of Typical Organophosphate Esters From a Wastewater Treatment Plant in Chengdu, China

“…However, it is easy for OPEs to enter the environment through volatilization, product wear, leakage and other ways in the process of production, transportation and use, because OPEs was added in the material by physical addition rather than chemical bonding (Gao et al, 2014). At present, OPEs widely existed in water (Kim et al, 2018;Yin et al, 2021), soil (Yin et al, 2016;Yang et al, 2018), outdoor air (Yin et al, 2020;Javier et al, 2016) and indoor (Tan et al, 2017) environment, even in many kinds of animals and plants (Wan et al, 2017;Strobel et al, 2018), human urine (Schindler et al, 2009) and breast milk (Sundkvist et al, 2010). Unfortunately, previous studies have demonstrated that some OPEs have the characteristics of carcinogenesis, neurotoxicity and reproductive toxicity that may bring risks to human health (Kim et al, 2018).…”

Levels and Distribution of Organophosphate Esters (OPEs) in Typical Megacity Wetland Park Landscape Water Bodies in Southwest China

“…Some OPEs have been confirmed to have obvious neurotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, carcinogenicity and genotoxicity ( Van and Boer, 2012;Du et al 2015). At present, the occurrence of OPEs has been reported in the air (Takigami et al 2009;Stapleton et al 2009;Clark et al 2017;Yin et al 2020), wastewater and sludge (Bester et al 2005;Gao et al 2016), surface water (Reemtsma et al 2008;Regnery and Püttmann, 2010;Guo et al 2017a), sediments (Cao et al 2012;Cheng et al 2014;Giulivo et al 2017), soils (Mihajlovic et al 2011;Matsukami et al 2015;Wan et al 2016;Cui et al 2017;Deng et al 2019) and humans (Shah et al 2006;Schindler et al 2009), even in remote areas (McDonough et al 2018). OPEs have become recognized global organic pollutants.…”

Response to reviewer 2#

“…Error estimation summary results BS-DISP Diagnostics: # of Cases Accepted: 100 % of Cases Accepted: 100% Largest Decrease in Q: -0.150999993 %dQ: -0.067824623 # of Decreases in Q: 0 # of Swaps in Best Fit: 0 # of Swaps in DISP: 0 Swaps by Factor: 0 0 0 DISP Diagnostics: Error Code: 0 Largest Decrease in Q: -0.005 %dQ: -0.002245848 Swaps by Factor: 0 0 0 BS Mapping: Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Unmapped Boot Factor 1 100 0 0 0 Boot Factor 2 0 100 0 0 Boot Factor 3 0 0 100 0 The references were referred to for identification of sources associated with each factor. "Factor 1 was deduced to be the plastics/electrical industry and indoor source emissions (Esch, 2000;Leisewitz et al, 2000;Stevens et al, 2006). Factor 2 contributed the most to TBEP (78.0%), followed by TDCPP (44.7%), while it did not contribute to TnBP.…”