Landfills and waste water treatment plants as sources of ... - GKSS

1. Introduction
1.1 General information on PFCs, PBDEs and musk fragrances
INTRODUCTION
Per- and polyfluorinated compounds (PFCs) are a diverse substance class that are usually
characterized by carbon chain lengths equal or greater than three, whereas the majority of
hydrogen atoms are exchanged by fluorine (Kissa 2001). Beside the lipophilic fluorinated
alkyl chain there is typically a hydrophilic functional group, which may be a carboxylate, a
sulfonate, phosphorate or an alcohol. The combination of those properties results in the
amphiphilic character of PFCs which combines both oil and water repellence (Kissa 2001;
Jensen et al. 2008). Furthermore, the strong carbon bond (460 kJ mol -1 ) makes PFCs very
stable against UV radiation, chemical and physical degradation as well as metabolic
transformation (Kissa 2001; Schultz et al. 2003).
To date, several hundred different PFCs have been produced and applied. Analytically
relevant are two main classes, generally separated by their properties into ionic and neutral
PFCs (see section 1.2) (Kissa 2001). Ionic PFCs consists of the groups of
perfluorocarboxylates (PFCAs) and –sulfonates (PFSAs). Their main characteristics comprise
ionic properties as well as their persistent (Prevedouros et al. 2006), bioaccumulative (Conder
et al. 2008) and toxic properties (Roos et al. 2008) accompanied by low vapour pressure and
moderately high water solubility (Jensen et al. 2008). Among these PFCs there are most
investigated perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) and perfluorosulfonate (PFOS) that raised broad
environmental concerns in recent years in the scientific community as well as political
stakeholders (USEPA 2002; Clara et al. 2008). Neutral PFCs comprise semi-volatile and
volatile molecules that are not persistent and are quickly degraded to ionic PFCs (Dinglasan et
al. 2004; Ellis et al. 2004; Martin et al. 2006). Semi-volatile and volatile PFCs which are part
of this study are fluorotelomer alcohols (FTOHs), fluorotelomer acrylates (FTAs),
perfluoroalkyl sulfonamides (FASAs) and pefluoroalkyl sulfonamido ethanols (FASEs).
FTOHs and FTAs consist of even-numbered carbon chains which are partially fluorinated and
either a hydroxyl (FTOHs) or an acrylate (FTAs) moiety. FASAs and FASEs analysed in this
study consist of either four (FBSA/ FBSE) or eight (FOSA/ FOSE) carbon atoms. All neutral
and ionic PFCs which are part of this study are presented in table 1.
Flame retardants are chemicals that are added or applied to materials in order to increase the
fire resistance of the corresponding product (WHO 1997). In the past decades, increasing use
of flammable polymer-based materials in construction, electronics, vehicles, furniture or
clothing enhanced the global demand of flame retardants (Alaee et al. 2003). Today, there are
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