Determination of persistent organic pollutant, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, in sediment samples from Potrerillos reservoir, Mendoza, Argentina

LANA, N.B.; BERTON, P. ; ATENCIO, ATENCIO G.; LEÓN, JOSÉ; NÉSTOR F. CIOCCO; JORGELINA C. ALTAMIRANO

Malargüe, Mendoza

Encuentro; ENCUENTRO INTERNACIONAL ICES 6; 2010

ICES

The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) has gradually come to perceive brominated flame retardants (BFRs) as an international policy target. Despite the comprenhensive international environmental legislation frame work on POPs, there is scarce information about BFRs in Argentinean environment. This paper reports the presence and concentration level of four PBDE congeners (BDE-47, BDE-99, BDE-100 and BDE-153) in sediment samples of Potrerrillos reservoir, Mendoza, Argentina. For such purpose, a novel simple, fast and efficient environmentally friendly analytical technique for leaching and preconcentration of PBDEs from sediment samples was developed. It was based on dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction by using solidification of floating organic droplet technique (DLLME-SFO). The combination of this technique with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (DLLME-SFO-GC-MS/MS) allowed determining PBDEs at trace concentration in sediment samples. In the present work, the study and optimization of the DLLME-SFO procedure was carried out through a multivariate approach by using 2k-1 factorial and response-surface designs. The quantification of PBDEs by GC-MS/MS was accomplished by standards addition method. The limits of detection (LODs), calculated based on three times standard deviation of the background signal (3) were 0.03 ng g-1, 0.04 ng g-1, 0.05 ng g-1 and 0.07 ng g-1 for BDE-47, BDE-100, BDE-99 y BDE-153, respectively. The precision of DLLME-SFO-GC-MS/MS evaluated over five replicate, leading RSDs values