Ricerc@Sapienza

The diffusion and the recycling of electric and electronic equipment
waste (WEEE) are an important issue for industrialised countries.
During treatment operations of this equipment, legacy and emerging
halogenated flame retardant can be released in the environment,
causing great concern for their toxicity. For this purpose, a method to
simultaneously determine polybrominated biphenyl ethers, hexabromocyclododecane,
10 emerging brominated flame retardants and
in parallel-polychlorinated biphenyls was optimised and applied to
particulate matter samples collected within a WEEE facility. In this
paper, starting from a previously published method, we drastically
simplified the sample preparation, reducing the overall completion
time, solvent consumption, costs and achieving adequate selectivity
and sensitivity for all the target compounds. The multi–analyte
method was evaluated in terms of reproducibility, linearity, recovery,
limits of detection, limit of quantification, and matrix effect and
compared to the previous method. Quantitative analyses were carried
out by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry in negative
chemical ionisation, using matrix-matched calibration curves. The
reliability and robustness of themethod were demonstrated through
the analysis of certified and reference compounds in Standard
Reference Material 2585. The most abundant compounds in particulate
matter samples, collected in an electric and electronic equipment
waste treatment plant, were BDE 47 (3.9 ngm−3), CB 138 (2.7 ngm−3),
and 1,2-bis(2,4,6-tribromophenoxy) ethane (4.2 ng m−3).