State of the art in the analysis of brominated flame retardants in biota and sediment: insights from the characterisation of two new certified reference materials

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission has recently released two new Certified Reference Materials (CRMs) for the analysis of brominated flame retardants (BFRs): the freshwater sediment ERM-CC537a and the fish tissue ERM-CE102. The production of these CRMs responds to the need of expanding the offer of quality assurance/quality control tools for the analysis of BFRs in the fields of environmental analysis and food control, especially for compliance purposes. The sediment ERM-CC537a carries certified values for polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and hexabromocyclododecane (HBCDD) diastereoisomers in the range of µg/kg (dry mass), while the fish tissue ERM-CE102 is certified for PBDEs in the ng/kg range (wet weight). ERM-CC537a is the first RM ever available with certified values for α-, β- and γ-HBCDD. The assignment of the certified values was performed via an intercomparison of expert laboratories. The evaluation of the data confirms the improving trend, observed in recent years, regarding the comparability of PBDEs measurement results, with a relative standard deviation (RSD) among laboratories slightly better for the fish matrix (8-11 %) compared to the sediment (9-15 %), despite lower mass fractions. The RSD of HCBDDs reported data (17 %) reveals that they are more challenging measurands. The average measurement uncertainty declared by the participants is about 30 %, but the reported results proved to be so close to the final assigned value that it should be feasible to reduce the uncertainty budget.

RICCI Marina;  SHEGUNOVA Penka;  VORKAMP K; 

2021-11-29

SPRINGER HEIDELBERG

JRC120078

0944-1344 (online),   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC120078,   

10.1007/s11356-020-08950-7 (online),