Legacy and Emerging Plasticizers and Stabilizers in PVC Floorings: Impacts of an Industrial Transition and Recycling

22 June 2023, Version 1
This content is a preprint and has not undergone peer review at the time of posting.

Abstract

Hazardous chemicals in building and construction plastics can lead to significant indoor exposure, health risks, and contamination of recycled materials. We systematically sample new PVC floor-ings on the Swiss market (n=151). We conduct elemental analysis using XRF, targeted and sus-pect GC MS analysis of ortho phthalates and alternative plasticizers, and bioassay tests for cyto-toxicity, oxidative stress, and endocrine, mutagenic, and genotoxic activities (for selected sam-ples). Surprisingly, 16% of the samples contain regulated chemicals above 0.1 weight%, mainly lead and bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP). Their presence is likely linked with the use of recy-cled PVC in new floorings, highlighting that uncontrolled recycling can delay the phase-out of hazardous chemicals. Furthermore, 29% of the samples contain ortho-phthalates besides DEHP (mainly diisononyl and diisodecyl phthalates, DiNP and DiDP) above 0.1 weight%, and 17% of the 85 tested samples cause certain adverse biological effects. Together, they make up an addi-tional 35% of samples of potential concern. Moreover, both suspect screening and bioassay results indicate the presence of additional (potentially) hazardous substances, including emerging alterna-tive plasticizers. Overall, our study highlights the urgent need for accelerating the phase-out of hazardous substances and enhancing transparency of chemical compositions in plastics to protect human and ecosystem health and enable the transition to a safe and sustainable circular economy.

Keywords

Building and Construction
Plastic additives
Chemicals of Concern
Circular Economy
Indoor Air Quality
Plasticizers
Phthalates
Recycling

Supplementary materials

Title
Description
Actions
Title
Supporting Information File 1 (SI1):
Description
Word/PDF file presenting details on methods, addi-tional results (concentration statistics, substance correlations, screening test quality), and additional discussions (exposure to plasticizers)
Actions
Title
Supporting Information File 2 (SI2):
Description
Excel file with large tables large tables of processed data. It contains the final analysis results for each sample (Sheet S1), further information on the analytical standards (Sheet S2) and outputs of the different analytical techniques (Sheets S3-S10)
Actions
Title
Supporting Information File 3 (SI3):
Description
Zip file containing the protocol used for ortho-phthalate quantitation.
Actions
Title
Supporting Information File 4 (SI4)
Description
Zip file containing Agilent method files for the GC-MS analyses.
Actions
Title
Supporting Information File 5 (SI5)
Description
Zip file containing python scripts for data analysis
Actions
Title
Supporting Information File 6 (SI6)
Description
Zip file containing the raw data from all conducted ATR FTIR measurements, as csv, spa, spc and dx files for each spectrum
Actions

Supplementary weblinks

Comments

Comments are not moderated before they are posted, but they can be removed by the site moderators if they are found to be in contravention of our Commenting Policy [opens in a new tab] - please read this policy before you post. Comments should be used for scholarly discussion of the content in question. You can find more information about how to use the commenting feature here [opens in a new tab] .
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy [opens in a new tab] and Terms of Service [opens in a new tab] apply.