Till Örebro universitet

In the present work, seven artificial leather samples, two made of raw fossil material, five of bio attributed polyvinyl chloride (bio-PVC), were extracted and analysed by GC-MS and bioassay analysis. The materials were either black or grey and laminated or unlaminated. The target GC-MS analysis included 56 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), whereof 12 parent PAHs (unsubstituted) and eight alkyl-PAHs were detected and quantified. The raw fossil material contained a total sum of PAHs in a range of 800-840 ng/g, while the concentrations in the bio-PVC material ranged between 94-660 ng/g. The content of aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) and estrogen receptor (ER) bioactive compounds were also analysed using the dioxin response (DR-) and ER mediated Chemical-Activated LUciferase gene eXpression (CALUX®) bioassays. One of the raw fossil materials, as well as four of the bio-PVC materials showed responses in the DR-CALUX, leading to bioassay derived TCDDequivalents (bio-TEQs) of 85 pg/g and 4.3-50 pg/g, respectively. Only two of the bio-PVC samples elicited responses above limit of quantification (LOQ) in the ER-CALUX bioassay, resulting in bioassay derived estradiol equivalents (bio-EEQs) of 19 pg/g and 47 pg/g. The materials contain a large fraction of unknown AhR agonists, since only around 1% of the bioTEQs could be explained by the chemically derived equivalents (chem-TEQs) calculated based on targeted analysis of 22 PAHs and their relative potency (REP) values. PAHs not included in the target analysis, as well as other compound groups often find in plastics, such as plasticizers and flame retardants, are believed to contribute to the unexplained fraction of the bio-TEQs in the samples. This shows how important it is to expand the target analysis beyond PAHs, to not overlook presence of potentially hazardous compounds. To further determine the potential risks of the materials to human expsoure, migration studies should be performed to predict the chemical exposure from material.