Synthetic musks in house dust

Abstract

House dust is a sink and repository for semi-volatile organic compounds and particle bound organic matter. Although data are available on the occurrence of pesticides, plasticizers, endocrine disrupters, and other organics that are persistent in house dust, reports on analytical methods and concentrations of synthetic musks in house dust are limited. The development of methods to analyze synthetic musks in house dust and results obtained are discussed in this chapter. For nitro musks capillary gas chromatography with an electron capture detector proved to be the method resulting in the lowest limit of determination. However this detector has the disadvantage of a rather low selectivity. For polycyclic musks capillary gas chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry was favored. From the analysis of some 30 house dust samples it may be concluded that concentrations of nitro musks are much lower that those of polycyclic musks. Musk xylene and musk ketone were the nitro musks most prominent in house dust with concentrations up to some milligrams per kilogram. Regarding polycyclic musks HHCB (e.g., Galaxolide) and AHTN (e.g., Tonalide) were present in nearly every dust sample with concentrations up to about 0.1 g kg-1. This underlines the fact that synthetic musks are widespread in the indoor environment with higher concentrations of polycyclic musks compared to nitro musks.