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Occurrences and inventories of heavy metals and brominated flame retardants in wastes from printed circuit board production

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Abstract

Pollutants including heavy metals and brominated flame retardant were detected in 10 types of production wastes from a typical printed circuit board manufacturing plant, and their inventories were estimated. Rinsing water from etching process had the highest concentrations of copper (665.51 mg/L), lead (1.02 mg/L), nickel (3.60 mg/L), chromium (0.97 mg/L), and tin (1.79 mg/L). Powdered solid waste (SW) from the cut lamination process contained the highest tetrabromobisphenol-A (TBBPA) levels (49.86 mg/kg). Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) were absent in this plant, in agreement with the international regulations of PBDE phase out. The pollutant inventories in the wastes exhibited in the order of copper > > zinc > tin ≈ nickel > lead > chromium > > TBBPA. The potential environmental impact of pollutants in SW during production and disposal were further investigated. A high partitioning of pollutant concentration between the total suspended particle and SW (−0.10 < log K TS < 2.12) was observed for most pollutants, indicating the emission pathway from SW to the airborne atmosphere in the workshop. Although SW met the toxicity characteristic leaching procedure, drilling powder with the smallest particle diameter still showed high leachabilities of lead and tin which may lead to a negative environmental impact during disposal.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the National Environmental Protection Public Welfare Science and Technology Research Program of China (201309047, 201309030) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (40901148). We would also appreciate the anonymous referees for their helpful comments on this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Environmental Risk Assessment and Control on Chemical Process, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, 200237, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaoyu Zhou, Jie Guo, Wei Zhang, Peng Zhou, Jingjing Deng & Kuangfei Lin

  2. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Functional Materials Chemistry, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, 200237, People’s Republic of China

    Kuangfei Lin

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  1. Xiaoyu Zhou
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  2. Jie Guo
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  3. Wei Zhang
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Correspondence to Kuangfei Lin.

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Responsible editor: Leif Kronberg

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Zhou, X., Guo, J., Zhang, W. et al. Occurrences and inventories of heavy metals and brominated flame retardants in wastes from printed circuit board production. Environ Sci Pollut Res 21, 10294–10306 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-2927-3

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