Kinetics of Thermal and Photolytic Segregation of Hexabromocyclododecane in Backcoated Textile Samples

Kinetics of the thermal and photolytic segregation of Hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) was studied using HPLC. Samples were found to lose some of their content of HBCD due to thermal or UV exposure. Analysis of thermally and UV aged samples time reveals that at the end of ageing periods the samples lost due to ageing at 25 °C, 60 °C, 90oC and due to UV exposure an amount of ~7.3%, 20% , 41 % and 23 % wt/wt of the amount of HBCD originally present in the samples, respectively. The thermal and photolytic release was found to follow first order kinetics with rate constants estimated to be 3.6x10^-3, 3.96x10^-3, 2.34x10^-2 and 3.5x10^-2 day-1 , respectively. Ageing of the textile samples was found to enhance the release of the total HBCD from the back coated textile without affecting the isomerization ratio of HBCD isomers. Migration of HBCD from the back coated textile into biological fluids was also studied. Head-over-Heels test was used to simulate the worst case of sucking an article. Migration of HBCD from the back-coated textile was reported for unaged, thermally aged and UV aged samples. The presence of biological fluids (sweat, saliva and juice) was found to enhance the migration of HBCD compared to water. The amount of migrated HBCD into biological fluid was found to increase from 1% to 4% wt/wt due to ageing conditions.