Polybrominated diphenyl ethers in blood from Korean incinerator workers and general population

Inverse age-dependent accumulation of decabromodiphenyl ether and other PBDEs in serum from a general adult population

“…However, most previous reports did not observe changes in PBDE concentrations in relation to age (Antignac et al, 2009;Harrad and Porter, 2007;Jin et al, 2009;Lee et al, 2007;Sjödin et al, 2000;Thomsen et al, 2002;Zota et al, 2008). These results are in contrast with those from other compounds having similar physical-chemical properties such as polychlorobiphenyls or polychlorinated pesticides, which tend to increase with age (Vizcaino et al, 2010).…”

“…BDE-47 has been observed to predominate the congener distributions of most populations in which BDE-209 was not measured: e.g. studies in North America (Castorina et al, 2011;Johnson et al, 2010;Sandanger et al, 2007;Sjödin et al, 2001Sjödin et al, , 2008, New Zealand (Harrad and Porter, 2007), Asia (Bi et al, 2006;Lee et al, 2007) and Europe, including studies conducted in Sweden, Norway, Germany and the Faroe Islands (Fängström et al, 2005;Guvenius et al, 2003;Schröter-Kermani et al, 2000;Thomsen et al, 2002). In some cases in which BDE-209 was included, BDE-47 was also found to predominate over the decabromate congener (Gómara et al, 2007;Vizcaino et al, 2011).…”

Concentrations of polybrominated diphenyl ethers in breast milk correlated to maternal age, education level, and occupational exposure

“…A positive age-dependency for PBDEs in the present study is shown for an exploratory relationship and the occurrence of this relation is still unknown. The mother's age was not significantly related to PBDEs in human specimens from most previous studies [11,12,24,36,[39][40][41][42]. In several studies, the absence of the age-dependency of PBDEs was probably due to recent exposure; notably, steady-state concentrations are never achieved in human tissues, and accumulation in the environment is over a short time span [39,43].…”

“…Sjödin et al [45] also indicated that serum levels of BDE-153, -154, and -183 were significantly higher in computer operators than in hospital cleaners. A report from Korea showed similar PBDE levels and congener profiles in incinerator workers and the general population [41]. A Japanese study showing the difference in age-dependency for BDE-153 between Kyoto and Sendai was probably influenced by their occupation (85% housewives in Kyoto and 85% workers in Sendai) [23].…”

The research of human exposure to polybrominated diphenyl ethers and perfluoroocatane sulfonate

“…The result (Figure 2(b)) showed that in Asia, the concentrations of PBDEs in human blood collected from South Korea were higher than those in China and Japan. In this work [43] , the researchers specially focused on PBDEs occupational exposure in incinerator workers and selected a group of the general population residing far from the sampling sites as the control samples. The investigation indicated that no obvious evidences proved that the concentrations in incinerator workers' bloods were higher than those in controlled human bodies.…”