Development Of An Analytical Method For Measuring Typical PBDEs In Biological Samples And Study On Distribution And Metabolism Of Tetra-Brominated Diphenyl Ether In Vivo In Mice

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are considered as a kind of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) which are ubiquitous in the environment due to their widely used as flame retardants and it has already caused some adverse effects to the ecosystem. Related researches have confirmed that PBDEs as endocrine disrupters can cause toxic damage to human and organisms. It is harmful for human and organisms in higher trophic level even trace amounts of PBDEs into the environment because of their biomagnifications. PBDEs levels in biological samples may reflect the situation of environmental pollution. Therefore, it is of great significance to develop a simple, rapid, efficient, and reliable analysis of PBDEs in biological samples method for studying the environmental behavior of PBDEs in order to evaluate the environmental hazards and human health risk.Accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) is time saving, high efficiency, low consumption of solvent and extraction process automation, it has become a newly developed pre-treatment technology for analysis of environmental pollutants in biological samples. An analytical method was developed for the determination of 3 typical PBDEs in biological samples in this study. The optimum conditions for pretreatment and the detection of samples were obtained using accelerated solvent extraction(ASE), automated gel permeation chromatography(GPC) purification and GC/NCI-MS analysis. In the swine liver matrix, the spike recovery of the method for 3 typical PBDEs was ranged from 74.43% to 119.62% with the relative standard deviation of 1.91% to 8.94%. The method detection limits of BDE-47, BDE-153 and BDE-197 were 0.081ng/g, 0.110ng/g and 0.092ng/g (dry weight). It is proved that the method for detection of typical PBDEs is not only of high sensitivity, wide linear range, high recovery and good reproducibility, but also of high automation, simplicity and rapidness. The developed analytical method has been applied successfully to the determination of typical PBDEs in four biological samples.Because PBDEs can accumulate through biomagnifications and transfer through the food chain, so that the organisms at high trophic level are subjected to be poisoned. Therefore, its high concentration accumulated in the human body who is generally highest in the food chain, results in threatening to human health. At present, the extrapolation from animal experiments (mainly rodents), has been employed to evaluate the impacts of PBDEs to human, so that it is important to study different PBDEs congeners in vivo distribution and metabolism. But it is currently still blank on other environmental pollutants such as PBDEs in rodents metabolism kinetics in domestic. To research distribution and metabolism data in vivo of the typical PBDEs, and then extrapolated to humans, is significant to assess the risks to human health.In this study, BDE-47 as the target pollutants and ICR mice as the biological subjects are emphasized on mice in vivo absorption, excretion, distribution and metabolism under the different exposure doses and different exposure time using the established methods of analysis typical PBDEs in biological sample. The results showed that BDE-47 in ICR mice in the GI tract is easily absorbed and then distributed in various tissues and organs. The parent compound content of feces and accumulated in various tissues and organs are higher in 10.0 mg/kg groups of mice than 0.1 mg/kg and 1.0mg/kg. BDE-47 is easy to accumulate in lipid rich tissues and organs. After the passage of time, BDE-47 in tissues and organs such as kidney and liver metabolism occurs, so the concentration of the tissues and organs in mice also changes.