Determination of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers and Their Derivates in Zebrafish Eggs

An analytical method was developed for the simultaneous analysis of 10 PBDEs, 12 MeO-PBDEs and 9 OH-PBDEs in Zebrafish eggs by liquid-liquid extraction coupled with GC/MS/MS. The conditions of extraction, chromatography and mass spectrometry were optimized. The target compounds were extracted through liquid-liquid extraction and the derivatization of OH-PBDEs was carried out without separation from extraction solution. Thus the pre-treatment time was shortened and all target compounds were analyzed simultaneously. Purification was conducted by dry packed acidic silica gel column. The all compounds can be eluted with 15 mL n-hexane and 15 mL mixed solvent of dichloromethane and n-hexane (1:1, V/V). Under optimized conditions, this method displayed good linearity for 31 compounds in the concentration range from 4.0 to 500 ng mL−1 (R2 > 0.9933). The recoveries were in the range of 71.6%–133.0%, the relative standard deviations were less than 21.5%, and the detection limits varied from 0.092 to 17.0 ng g−1. This method was proved to be efficient for maternal transfer study of BDE-47, 6-OH-BDE-47, 6-MeO-BDE-47, 2′-OH-BDE-28 and 2′-MeO-BDE-28 in real samples. After maternal exposure, the five compounds showed different maternal transfer potency in Zebrafish, which provides new consideration to the exposure assessment of such compounds.