Are We Exposed to Halogenated Flame Retardants from both Primary and Secondary Sources?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Halogenated flame retardants (HFRs) were measured in air, floor dust, and surface wipes of electronic devices (e-devices) and hands of participants in 51 Canadian homes to assess the relationship between HFR levels in these matrices and to identify major sources and exposure pathways. Hand-held e-devices had significantly higher concentrations of all HFRs than non-hand-held devices, with the exceptions being decabromodiphenyl ethane (DBDPE) and decabromodiphenyl ether (BDE-209). HFR concentrations on hands were correlated with levels in dust and hand-held e-devices, with the strongest correlations being seen for BDE-47 and -99, 2-ethylhexyl-2,3,4,5-tetrabromobenzoate (EH-TBB), and bis(3-ethylhexyl) tetrabromophthalate (BEH-TEBP). It is highly unlikely that hand-held devices sampled in 2015 had intentionally added BDE-47 and -99 that were regulated in 2008 in Canada. We hypothesize that hands transferred these chemicals from older products, which act as primary sources, to hand-held devices, which then can act as secondary sources of exposure. This study also found evidence for TVs as a primary source of DBDPE and BDE-209 for dust, hand-held devices, and hands. We suggest that an outdated, overly stringent flammability standard, developed in the 1970s to protect against fires from “instant-on” cathode ray tube TVs, led to elevated levels of these HFRs indoors. Although the standard for TV enclosures has been updated recently, the legacy of the outdated standard persists.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".