Abstract:

An accurate, efficient and fast method for the determination of residues of polybrominated diphenyl ethers
in water using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was developed. The sample was extracted using
dichloromethane, concentrated under nitrogen blow, dissolved in hexane, and then detected by GC-MS. The calibration
curves of all 19 polybrominated diphenyl ethers presented good linearity with correlation coefficients (R2) higher than 0.99.
The relative standard deviations (RSD, n = 6) for precision were between 1.5% and 5.6%, and the limits of detection (LOD)
were in the range from 0.1 to 1.0 μg/L. The recoveries of PBDE-3 and PBDE-209 were from 84.3% to 93.2%, with RSD
(n = 6) between 3.6% and 10.1%. These results displayed that all the evaluated figures of merit of the method could meet the
analytical requirements. Thus, the developed method could be applied in the routine analysis of polybrominated diphenyl
ethers residues in water.

Key words: gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), water, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), brominated flame retardants