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. 2010 Apr 15;44(8):2822-7.
doi: 10.1021/es902413k.

Inadvertent polychlorinated biphenyls in commercial paint pigments

Dingfei Hu  1 , Keri C Hornbuckle
Affiliations
Free PMC article

Inadvertent polychlorinated biphenyls in commercial paint pigments

Dingfei Hu et al. Environ Sci Technol. .
Free PMC article

Abstract

A polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) that was not produced as part of the Aroclor mixtures banned in the 1980s was recently reported in air samples collected in Chicago, Philadelphia, the Arctic, and several sites around the Great Lakes. In Chicago, the congener 3,3'-dichlorobiphenyl or PCB11 was found to be the fifth most concentrated congener and ubiquitous throughout the city. The congener exhibited strong seasonal concentration trends that suggest volatilization of this compound from common outdoor surfaces. Due to these findings and also the compound's presence in waters that received waste from paint manufacturing facilities, we hypothesized that PCB11 may be present in current commercial paint. In this study we measured PCBs in paint sold on the current retail market. We tested 33 commercial paint pigments purchased from three local paint stores. The pigment samples were analyzed for all 209 PCB congeners using gas chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS). More than 50 PCB congeners including several dioxin-like PCBs were detected, and the PCB profiles varied due to different types of pigments and different manufacturing processes. PCB congeners were detected in azo and phthalocyanine pigments which are commonly used in paint but also in inks, textiles, paper, cosmetics, leather, plastics, food and other materials. Our findings suggest several possible mechanisms for the inadvertent production of specific PCB congeners during the manufacturing of paint pigments.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
∑PCB concentrations in 33 commercial paint pigments purchased from Sherwin Williams, PPG Pittsburgh, and Vogel paint stores.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Examples of PCB profiles in paint pigments (top two plots) and the frequency of congener detection in the 15 pigments with detected PCBs (bottom plot).
Figure 3
Figure 3
PCB formation mechanisms in the manufacture process of phthalocyanine blue and phthalocyanine green. The subscripts x, a, b, and c refer to the number of chlorine atoms.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Possible formation pathways of PCB11 and PCB52 in pigments.
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References

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    1. Hu D.; Martinez A.; Hornbuckle K. C. Discovery of non-Aroclor PCB (3, 3′-dichlorobiphenyl) in Chicago air. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2008, 42, 7873–7877. - PMC - PubMed
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