Determination of organophosphate flame retardants in bottled drinking water via solid-phase extraction and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

Abstract

Organophosphate flame retardants (OPFRs) are frequently used in commercial products as flame retardants and plasticizers to meet fire safety standards. Their extensive use has led to increasing concerns about environmental and human exposure, as OPFRs are released into the environment during product manufacturing, usage, and disposal. Exposure to OPFRs could induce various toxic effects such as neurotoxicity and endocrine disruption. Therefore, evaluation of OPFRs contamination in frequently encountered media in daily life is of significant importance. Specifically, humans consume a significant amount of water daily, thus monitoring the levels of OPFRs in drinking water is critical. Therefore, in this study, an analytical method using solid-phase extraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (SPE-GC-MS) was developed for the quantitation of ten popular OPFRs in drinking water. The method was optimized considering the SPE cartridge, pH of the water samples, elution solvent, and reconstitution solvent. The developed method was successfully validated in terms of limit of detection (LOD), limit of quantification (LOQ), linearity, accuracy and precision. The LOQ values ranged between 1.0 and 41.0 ng/L, with the accuracy and precision demonstrating satisfactory results as the recoveries and relative standard deviation (RSD) values ranged 70.62–96.83 % and 1.68–13.47 %, respectively. The developed method was applied to drinking water samples collected from South Korea. Among the ten OPFRs analyzed, tris(2-chloroethyl) phosphate (TCEP) and tris(2-chloro-1-methylethyl) phosphate (TCIPP) demonstrated concentrations higher than the LOQ values with ranges of 8.77–22.02 ng/L and 16.46–39.67 ng/L, respectively. As the industrial usage of OPFRs continuously increases, the contamination of various water samples with OPFRs must be monitored. The developed method can be used to monitor OPFRs in water samples from various environments.