Ever since the interest in organic environmental contaminants first emerged 50years ago, there has been a need to present discussion of such chemicals and their transformation products using simple ...abbreviations so as to avoid the repetitive use of long chemical names. As the number of chemicals of concern has increased, the number of abbreviations has also increased dramatically, sometimes resulting in the use of different abbreviations for the same chemical. In this article, we propose abbreviations for flame retardants (FRs) substituted with bromine or chlorine atoms or including a functional group containing phosphorus, i.e. BFRs, CFRs and PFRs, respectively. Due to the large number of halogenated and organophosphorus FRs, it has become increasingly important to develop a strategy for abbreviating the chemical names of FRs. In this paper, a two step procedure is proposed for deriving practical abbreviations (PRABs) for the chemicals discussed. In the first step, structural abbreviations (STABs) are developed using specific STAB criteria based on the FR structure. However, since several of the derived STABs are complicated and long, we propose instead the use of PRABs. These are, commonly, an extract of the most essential part of the STAB, while also considering abbreviations previously used in the literature. We indicate how these can be used to develop an abbreviation that can be generally accepted by scientists and other professionals involved in FR related work. Tables with PRABs and STABs for BFRs, CFRs and PFRs are presented, including CAS (Chemical Abstract Service) numbers, notes of abbreviations that have been used previously, CA (Chemical Abstract) name, common names and trade names, as well as some fundamental physico-chemical constants.
► A standard is proposed for abbreviations of brominated, chlorinated and phosphorus containing flame retardants (BFRs, CFRs and PFRs). ► The standard is aimed to simplify and promote scientific communication related to BFRs, CFRs and PFRs. ► Structured abbreviations (STABs) are prepared in close relation to the chemical structure of the BFRs, CFRs and PFRs. ► Practical abbreviations (PRABs) are in general derived from the STABs or from commonly used abbreviations from the past. ► Established, emerging, novel and potential BFRs, CFRs and PFRs are defined.
Abstract
The metabolism of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) is complex and has an impact on toxicity, and thereby on the assessment of PCB risks. A large number of reactive and stable metabolites are ...formed in the processes of biotransformation in biota in general, and in humans in particular. The aim of this document is to provide an overview of PCB metabolism, and to identify the metabolites of concern and their occurrence. Emphasis is given to mammalian metabolism of PCBs and their hydroxyl, methylsulfonyl, and sulfated metabolites, especially those that persist in human blood. Potential intracellular targets and health risks are also discussed.
•Multiple exposures and their combined effects require better risk management.•Precautionary approaches and intermediate measures could already be applied.•A European strategy is needed to address ...the research and policy needs.
The number of anthropogenic chemicals, manufactured, by-products, metabolites and abiotically formed transformation products, counts to hundreds of thousands, at present. Thus, humans and wildlife are exposed to complex mixtures, never one chemical at a time and rarely with only one dominating effect. Hence there is an urgent need to develop strategies on how exposure to multiple hazardous chemicals and the combination of their effects can be assessed. A workshop, “Advancing the Assessment of Chemical Mixtures and their Risks for Human Health and the Environment” was organized in May 2018 together with Joint Research Center in Ispra, EU-funded research projects and Commission Services and relevant EU agencies. This forum for researchers and policy-makers was created to discuss and identify gaps in risk assessment and governance of chemical mixtures as well as to discuss state of the art science and future research needs. Based on the presentations and discussions at this workshop we want to bring forward the following Key Messages:•We are at a turning point: multiple exposures and their combined effects require better management to protect public health and the environment from hazardous chemical mixtures.•Regulatory initiatives should be launched to investigate the opportunities for all relevant regulatory frameworks to include prospective mixture risk assessment and consider combined exposures to (real-life) chemical mixtures to humans and wildlife, across sectors.•Precautionary approaches and intermediate measures (e.g. Mixture Assessment Factor) can already be applied, although, definitive mixture risk assessments cannot be routinely conducted due to significant knowledge and data gaps.•A European strategy needs to be set, through stakeholder engagement, for the governance of combined exposure to multiple chemicals and mixtures. The strategy would include research aimed at scientific advancement in mechanistic understanding and modelling techniques, as well as research to address regulatory and policy needs. Without such a clear strategy, specific objectives and common priorities, research, and policies to address mixtures will likely remain scattered and insufficient.
Chlorinated paraffins (CPs, polychlorinated n-alkanes) are versatile, high-production-volume chemicals. A previous study indicated that hand blenders leak CPs into prepared food.
(1) to estimate ...exposure to CPs from hand blender use compared to background CP exposure from diet; (2) to assess the risk from human dietary exposure to CPs from hand blender use; (3) to investigate how hand blenders leak out CPs.
CPs were analyzed in food market baskets, in cooking oil/water samples (1g oil/100mL water) mixed using 16 different hand blenders, and in dismantled components of the hand blenders.
Dietary intake of CPs from food market baskets was calculated to be 4.6μg/day per capita for Swedish adults. Total CP amounts in oil/water leakage samples ranged from <0.09 to 120μg using the hand blenders once. CP leakage showed no decreasing levels after 20 times of hand blender usage. CP profiles in the leakage samples matched those of self-lubricating bearings and/or polymer components disassembled from the hand blenders.
Usage of 75% of the hand blenders tested will lead to increased human exposure to CPs. The intake of CPs for Swedish adults by using hand blenders once a day can raise their daily dietary intake by a factor of up to 26. The 95th percentile intake of CPs via using the hand blenders once a day exceeded the TDI for Swedish infants with a body weight <7.2kg. CP leakage came from blender components which contain CPs. The leakage may last several hundred times of hand blender use.
•Human daily dietary exposure to chlorinated paraffins can be significantly increased by using hand blenders.•Chlorinated paraffin intake via hand blender use exceeded the tolerable daily intake for infants with a body weight <7.2kg.•C6 – C22 chlorinated paraffins were identified in the leakage from the hand blender use.•The leakage came from blender components which contain chlorinated paraffins.
Electronic waste (e-waste) is produced in staggering quantities, estimated globally to be 41.8 million tonnes in 2014. Informal e-waste recycling is a source of much-needed income in many low- to ...middle-income countries. However, its handling and disposal in underdeveloped countries is often unsafe and leads to contaminated environments. Rudimentary and uncontrolled processing methods often result in substantial harmful chemical exposures among vulnerable populations, including women and children. E-waste hazards have not yet received the attention they deserve in research and public health agendas.
We provide an overview of the scale and health risks. We review international efforts concerned with environmental hazards, especially affecting children, as a preface to presenting next steps in addressing health issues stemming from the global e-waste problem.
The e-waste problem has been building for decades. Increased observation of adverse health effects from e-waste sites calls for protecting human health and the environment from e-waste contamination. Even if e-waste exposure intervention and prevention efforts are implemented, legacy contamination will remain, necessitating increased awareness of e-waste as a major environmental health threat.
Global, national, and local levels efforts must aim to create safe recycling operations that consider broad security issues for people who rely on e-waste processing for survival. Paramount to these efforts is reducing pregnant women and children's e-waste exposures to mitigate harmful health effects. With human environmental health in mind, novel dismantling methods and remediation technologies and intervention practices are needed to protect communities.
Heacock M, Kelly CB, Asante KA, Birnbaum LS, Bergman AL, Bruné MN, Buka I, Carpenter DO, Chen A, Huo X, Kamel M, Landrigan PJ, Magalini F, Diaz-Barriga F, Neira M, Omar M, Pascale A, Ruchirawat M, Sly L, Sly PD, Van den Berg M, Suk WA. 2016. E-waste and harm to vulnerable populations: a growing global problem. Environ Health Perspect 124:550-555; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1509699.
•The DLC concentrations in EWRS are significantly higher than in reference areas.•Atmospheric DLC levels in EWRS decreased after stricter environmental regulations were implemented.•Potential health ...effects of DLCs on multiple systems in the human body are presented.•The DLC body burdens in EWRS are higher than levels associated with health impairments.•Infants and young children in EWRS have higher DLC exposure and health risks than adults.
Electrical and electronic waste (e-waste) burning and recycling activities have become one of the main emission sources of dioxin-like compounds (DLCs). Workers involved in e-waste recycling operations and residents living near e-waste recycling sites (EWRS) are exposed to high levels of DLCs. Epidemiological and experimental in vivo studies have reported a range of interconnected responses in multiple systems with DLC exposure. However, due to the compositional complexity of DLCs and difficulties in assessing mixture effects of the complex mixture of e-waste-related contaminants, there are few studies concerning human health outcomes related to DLC exposure at informal EWRS. In this paper, we have reviewed the environmental levels and body burdens of DLCs at EWRS and compared them with the levels reported to be associated with observable adverse effects to assess the health risks of DLC exposure at EWRS. In general, DLC concentrations at EWRS of many countries have been decreasing in recent years due to stricter regulations on e-waste recycling activities, but the contamination status is still severe. Comparison with available data from industrial sites and well-known highly DLC contaminated areas shows that high levels of DLCs derived from crude e-waste recycling processes lead to elevated body burdens. The DLC levels in human blood and breast milk at EWRS are higher than those reported in some epidemiological studies that are related to various health impacts. The estimated total daily intakes of DLCs for people in EWRS far exceed the WHO recommended total daily intake limit. It can be inferred that people living in EWRS with high DLC contamination have higher health risks. Therefore, more well-designed epidemiological studies are urgently needed to focus on the health effects of DLC pollution in EWRS. Continuous monitoring of the temporal trends of DLC levels in EWRS after actions is of highest importance.
Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have been of environmental and health concern for more than half a century and have their own intergovernmental regulation through the Stockholm Convention, from ...2001. One major concern is the nursing child’s exposure to POPs, a concern that has led to a very large number of scientific studies on POPs in mothers’ milk. The present review is a report on the assessment on worldwide spatial distributions of POPs and of their temporal trends. The data presented herein is a compilation based on scientific publications between 1995 and 2011. It is evident that the concentrations in mothers’ milk depend on the use of pesticides and industrial chemicals defined as POPs. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and “dioxins” are higher in the more industrialized areas, Europe and Northern America, whereas pesticides are higher in Africa and Asia and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are reported in higher concentrations in the USA. POPs are consequently distributed to women in all parts of the world and are thus delivered to the nursing child. The review points out several major problems in the reporting of data, which are crucial to enable high quality comparisons. Even though the data set is large, the comparability is hampered by differences in reporting. In conclusion, much more detailed instructions are needed for reporting POPs in mothers’ milk. Temporal trend data for POPs in mothers’ milk is scarce and is of interest when studying longer time series. The only two countries with long temporal trend studies are Japan and Sweden. In most cases, the trends show decreasing concentrations of POPs in mothers’ milk. However, hexabromocyclododecane is showing increasing temporal concentration trends in both Japan and Sweden.
Rockström et al. (2009a, 2009b) have warned that humanity must reduce anthropogenic impacts defined by nine planetary boundaries if “unacceptable global change” is to be avoided. Chemical pollution ...was identified as one of those boundaries for which continued impacts could erode the resilience of ecosystems and humanity. The central concept of the planetary boundary (or boundaries) for chemical pollution (PBCP or PBCPs) is that the Earth has a finite assimilative capacity for chemical pollution, which includes persistent, as well as readily degradable chemicals released at local to regional scales, which in aggregate threaten ecosystem and human viability. The PBCP allows humanity to explicitly address the increasingly global aspects of chemical pollution throughout a chemical's life cycle and the need for a global response of internationally coordinated control measures. We submit that sufficient evidence shows stresses on ecosystem and human health at local to global scales, suggesting that conditions are transgressing the safe operating space delimited by a PBCP. As such, current local to global pollution control measures are insufficient. However, while the PBCP is an important conceptual step forward, at this point single or multiple PBCPs are challenging to operationalize due to the extremely large number of commercial chemicals or mixtures of chemicals that cause myriad adverse effects to innumerable species and ecosystems, and the complex linkages between emissions, environmental concentrations, exposures and adverse effects. As well, the normative nature of a PBCP presents challenges of negotiating pollution limits amongst societal groups with differing viewpoints. Thus, a combination of approaches is recommended as follows: develop indicators of chemical pollution, for both control and response variables, that will aid in quantifying a PBCP(s) and gauging progress towards reducing chemical pollution; develop new technologies and technical and social approaches to mitigate global chemical pollution that emphasize a preventative approach; coordinate pollution control and sustainability efforts; and facilitate implementation of multiple (and potentially decentralized) control efforts involving scientists, civil society, government, non-governmental organizations and international bodies.
•Planetary boundaries of Rockström et al. (2009) to avoid “unacceptable global change”•Boundary for chemical pollution (PBCP) reflects Earth's finite assimilative capacity.•While conceptually necessary, a PBCP is challenging to operationalize.•To meet the need of abating global pollution, four recommendations are presented.•Recommend devising new, preventative technologies and social approaches.
Among all brominated flame retardants in use, the polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) have been identified as being of particular environmental concern due to their global distribution and ...bioaccumulating properties, as observed in humans and wildlife worldwide. Still there is a need for more data on the basic characteristics of PBDEs to better understand and describe their environmental fate. Hence, the aim of this study was to investigate the photochemical degradation of PBDEs with different degrees of bromination. The photochemical degradation of 15 individual PBDEs substituted with 4−10 bromine atoms was studied in methanol/water (8:2) by UV light in the sunlight region. Nine of these were also studied in pure methanol, and four of the nine PBDEs were studied in tetrahydrofuran. The photochemical reaction rate decreased with decreasing number of bromine substituents in the molecule but also in some cases influenced by the PBDE substitution pattern. The reaction rate was dependent on the solvent in such a way that the reaction rate in a methanol/water solution was consistently around 1.7 times lower than in pure methanol and 2−3 times lower than in THF. The UV degradation half-life of decaBDE (T 1/2 = 0.5 h) was more than 500 times shorter than the environmentally abundant congener 2,2‘,4,4‘-tetraBDE (T 1/2 = 12 d) in methanol/water. The quantum yields in the methanol/water solution ranged from 0.1 to 0.3. The photochemical reaction of decaBDE is a consecutive debromination from ten- down to six-bromine-substituted PBDEs. Products with less than six bromines were tentatively identified as brominated dibenzofurans and traces of what was indicated as methoxylated brominated dibenzofurans.
The environmental and human health concerns for organohalogen contaminants (OHCs) extend beyond the 23 persistent organic pollutants (POPs) regulated by the Stockholm Convention. The current, intense ...industrial production and use of chemicals in China and their bioaccumulation makes Chinese wildlife highly suitable for the assessment of legacy, novel and emerging environmental pollutants. In the present study, six species of amphibians, fish and birds were sampled from paddy fields in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) were screened for OHCs. Some extensive contamination was found, both regarding number and concentrations of the analytes, among the species assessed. High concentrations of chlorinated paraffins were found in the snake, Short-tailed mamushi (range of 200–340μgg−1lw), Peregrine falcon (8–59μgg−1lw) and Asiatic toad (97μgg−1lw). Novel contaminants and patterns were observed; octaCBs to decaCB made up 20% of the total polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) content in the samples and new OHCs, substituted with 5–8 chlorines, were found but are not yet structurally confirmed. In addition, Dechlorane 602 (DDC-DBF) and numerous other OHCs (DDTs, hexachlorocyclohexanes (HCHs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), hexbromocyclododecane (HBCDD), chlordane, heptachlor, endosulfan and Mirex) were found in all species analyzed. These data show extensive chemical contamination of wildlife in the YRD with a suite of OHCs with both known and unknown toxicities, calling for further in-depth studies.
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•Six wildlife species of amphibians, fish and birds were sampled and screened for organohalogen contaminants (OHCs) in a paddy field in Yangtze River Delta, China.•High contaminations of chlorinated paraffins were found particularly in terrestrial species.•A novel pattern of PCBs with relatively high contribution from octa-CBs to decaCB was observed.•A new group of OHCs, with 5–8 chlorines, were found but are not yet structurally confirmed.•DDTs was the major organochlorine pesticide contaminant in wildlife; HBCDD level in wildlife was comparable to PBDEs in the present study.•The results show an extensive contamination of OHCs in wildlife in Yangtze River Delta, calling for further (eco)toxicology study and environmental monitoring.
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