Occurrence of organophosphate flame retardants in agricultural products from Korean markets

Organophosphate flame retardants (OPFRs) are widely used in various products encountered in daily life including home appliances, furniture, and plastics. This study developed a method to determine the presence of 11 OPFRs in agricultural products to monitor OPFR contamination in Korean local markets. The method was based on QuEChERS extraction with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry using gradient elution with a run time of 13 min. The selectivity, linearity, limit of detection (LOD), limit of quantification (LOQ), recovery, and precision of developed method were validated based on the CODEX guidelines. The LOD values for 11 OPFRs ranged from 0.05 to 0.66 ng/g, which were comparable to the values obtained in previous studies. The established method was successfully applied to agricultural products collected in a Korean market. A 32 product types with seven replicates (total 224 samples) were monitored for OPFR contamination. These products included popular fruits and vegetables in Korea such as apples, cucumber, corn, etc. The agricultural products with the highest average of total OPFR concentration was eggplants (12.50 ng/g ww), and the OPFR types with the highest average concentration across all tested agricultural products was tris (1-chloropropan-2-yl) phosphate (TCIPP), with an average value of 1.48 ng/g. The estimated daily intake values were much lower than the reference dose values of OPFRs, which showed that exposure to OPFRs through agricultural products is generally safe. The results of this study could be used as the basis for expanding monitoring of OPFRs to aquatic and meat products, and will also be helpful in informing industries about the current risk of OPFR contamination.