Evaluation of the thermal desorption-GC/MS method for the determination of decabromodiphenyl ether (DeBDE) in order of a few hundred ppm contained in a certified standard polystyrene sample

Thermal desorption (TD)-GC/MS, recently developed for the determination of DeBDE in a polystyrene (PS) sample to an order of a few %, was evaluated in detail by using a certified standard PS sample containing 317 ppm of DeBDE. Not only the accuracy and precision of the results, but also the linearity of the working calibration curve were discussed in terms of the catalytic decomposition of DeBDE induced by the degrading macro-radical of the matrix polymer.