Fluorotelomer alcohol, degradation

Ellis DA, JW Martin, AO De Silva, SA Mabury, MD Hurley, MPS Andersen, TJ Wallington (2004) Degradation of fluorotelomer alcohols a likely atmospheric source of perfluorinated carboxylic acids. Environ Sci Technol 38 3316-3321. 

These considerations apply also to the fluorotelomer alcohol CF3(CF2)7-CH2CH20H that was degraded in a mixed cnltnre obtained by enrichment with ethanol. Terminal dehydrogenation followed by elimination of flnoride, hydration and further loss of fluoride produced perfluorooctanoate (Dinglasan et al. 2004). 

Under the agreement, companies will reduce emissions of these compounds from their facilities and consumer products by 95 per cent by 2010, and work towards eliminating the sources of PFOA by no later than 2015. Furthermore, PFOS and PFOA as well as other perfluorocarboxylic acids (PFCAs) are stable degradation products and/or metabolites of neutral PFCs such as fluorotelomer alcohols (PFTOHs), perfluorinated sulphonamides (PFASAs) and perfluorinated sulphonamide ethanols (PFASEs) [22]. Therefore, the largest global manufacturer and supplier of fluorotelomers such as Capstone, DuPont have adapted its entire product line to utilise short-chain chemistry because short-chain molecules cannot break down to PFOA in the environment. 

Abstract In the past years, elucidation of transformation products of per- and polyfluorinated chemicals (PFC) has been a task frequently approached by analytical chemists. PCT, such as perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) are persistent and thus, the analytical quest to detect transformation products has failed so far. Their prominence as contaminants is mainly due to their extreme persistence, which is linked to their perfluoroalkyl chain length. Molecules that are less heavily fluorinated can show very complex metabolic behavior, as is the case for fluorotelomer alcohols. These compounds are degraded via different but simultaneous pathways, which produce different stable metabolites. Biotransformation processes of PFC may occur when these compounds enter the environment, and thus known and unknown PFC may be generated in these compartments. Therefore, it is essential to determine metabolic pathways of such compounds in order to entirely understand their fate in the environment. This chapter summarizes methodological approaches and instmmental setups which have been implemented in biotransformation studies of PFC and focuses on mass spectrometric methods and the separation techniques coupled to the mass spectrometer (MS). Valuable MS approaches that have not been frequently used in studies on PFC are presented as well. Since compounds carrying C-F bonds exhibit unique properties, these will be initially presented to address the meaning of these properties both for analytical tasks and for the setup of biotransformation experiments. 

Similar experiments for the degradation of the 8-2-fluorotelomer alcohol on the basis of microbial communities of a domestic wastewater treatment plant revealed a different pattern of metabolite formation. There, no formation of perfluorinated carboxylic acids like PFOA or PFHxA has been observed [61] suggesting that in this case the biological community of the industrial wastewater may be more adapted to fluorinated chemicals as a potential substrate. 

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