Debromination of Decabromodiphenyl Ether (BDE 209) in Human and Fish Liver Microsomes

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are flame retardant chemicals that are now considered a new class of persistent organic pollutants. Over the past thirty years, the levels of PBDEs have been increasing rapidly in a variety of environmental compartments and in human tissues (Hites 2004). Presently, two of the three commercial mixtures of PBDEs (pentaBDE and octaBDE) are either banned from use or voluntarily phased out of production and it is therefore anticipated that levels of PBDEs will decrease in the environment. However, use of the third commercial mixture, decaBDE, remains unrestricted. Several studies have demonstrated that decaBDE can be reductively dehalogenated to congeners present in the pentaBDE and octaBDE commercial mixtures via photodegradation (Eriksson et al. 2004; Soderstrom et al. 2004; Ahn et al. 2006), biodegradation (Gerecke et al. 2005; He et al. 2006) and biotransformation (Kierkegaard et al. 1999; Stapleton et al. 2004; Tomy et al. 2004).