Occurrence of hydrophobic organic pollutants (BFRs and UV-filters) in sediments from South America

• BFRs and UV-F levels were comparable to those reported in other regions of the world.
• The contamination was greater in Colombian sites.
• Contribution of BFRs was higher than that of UV-F for almost all sediments.
• Deca-BDE was the formulation used in Colombia, whereas Penta-BDE was also applied in Chile.
• DBDPE was detected only in Chilean samples.

In the present study the occurrence of emerging hydrophobic organic pollutants in sediment samples from South America (Chile and Colombia) was investigated for the first time. Nineteen Chilean and thirteen Colombian sediment samples were analyzed in order to determine their content of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) (including PBDEs and emerging BFRs) as well as UV filters (UV-F). Samples were collected from neighboring aquatic ecosystems highly urbanized and industrialized in Colombia (Magdalena River area) and Chile (Biobio region). Different analytical procedures were applied depending on the selected analytes, based on chromatographic and mass spectrometric methodologies (GC–MS and LC–MS–MS). In general, concentration levels of both BFRs (up to 2.43 and 143 ng g−1 dw of PBDEs in Chile and Colombia, respectively) and UV-F (nd–2.96 and nd–54.4 ng g−1 dw in Chile and Colombia, respectively) were in the low range of published data, and the contribution of BFRs was higher than that of UV-F for almost all the sampled sediments.