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Determination of Ten Perfluorinated Compounds in Bluegill Sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus) Fillets
Citation:
DELINSKY, A., M. STRYNAR, S. F. Nakayama, J. L. VARNS, X. Ye, P. McCann, AND A. B. LINDSTROM. Determination of Ten Perfluorinated Compounds in Bluegill Sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus) Fillets. ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH. Academic Press Incorporated, Orlando, FL, 109(8):975-984, (2009).
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory′s (NERL) Human Exposure and Atmospheric Sciences Division (HEASD) conducts research in support of EPA′s mission to protect human health and the environment. HEASD′s research program supports Goal 1 (Clean Air) and Goal 4 (Healthy People) of EPA′s strategic plan. More specifically, our division conducts research to characterize the movement of pollutants from the source to contact with humans. Our multidisciplinary research program produces Methods, Measurements, and Models to identify relationships between and characterize processes that link source emissions, environmental concentrations, human exposures, and target-tissue dose. The impact of these tools is improved regulatory programs and policies for EPA.
Description:
Limited information is known about the environmental distributions of the perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) such as perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), in part due to a lack of well characterized analytical methods that can be used to accurately measure these contaminants in key environmental matrices. In this work, a rigorous SPE/liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry method for the measurement of 10 PFCs in fish fillets is described and applied to bluegill sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus) fillets collected from selected areas of Minnesota and North Carolina. The 4 PFC analytes that were routinely detected in bluegill fillets were PFOS, perfluorodecanoic acid (C10), perfluoroundecanoic acid (C11), and perflurododecanoic acid (C12). Measures of method accuracy and precision for these compounds showed that calculated concentrations of PFCs in spiked samples differed by less than 20% from their theoretical values and that the %RSD for these measurements were also less than ± 20%. The Minnesota samples show increasing concentrations of the 4 detectable PFCs on the Mississippi River in proximity to known potential PFC sources and low levels of PFCs in the St. Croix River, which receives minimal known industrial inputs. Bluegill from Lake Calhoun, located in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, had higher levels of PFCs than were found in the Mississippi River near known potential PFC sources. PFOS was the most prevalent PFC found in Minnesota samples, with median concentrations of 47.0 – 102 ng/g in locations along the Mississippi River, 2.08 ng/g in the St. Croix River, and 275 ng/g in Lake Calhoun. North Carolina samples, which were collected from two rivers with no known historical PFC sources, had PFC concentrations that were well above the limit of quantitation (LOQ). PFOS was the predominant analyte in fish taken from the Haw and Deep Rivers in the Cape Fear River Basin, with median concentrations of 30.3 and 62.2 ng/g, respectively. Mean concentrations of C10, C11, and C12 in NC samples were among the highest reported in the literature, with respective median values of 9.08, 23.9, and 6.60 ng/g in fish from the Haw River and 2.90, 9.15, and 3.46 ng/g in fish from the Deep River. Application of this method suggests that PFC contamination occurs in some U.S. freshwater fish and may not be limited to areas with historical PFC inputs.
URLs/Downloads:
Determination of Ten Perfluorinated Compounds in Bluegill Sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus) Fillets (PDF, NA pp, 461 KB, about PDF)Environmental Research
