Assessment of Persistent Organic Pollutants in soft furnishings for the EA

The Challenge

Brominated flame retardants such as DecaBDE and HBCDD fall within a category of chemicals designated as persistent organic pollutants - POPs.

For fire safety reasons these have been added during the manufacture of textiles and foams used in soft furnishings, including sofas, armchairs and other upholstered seating.

However, information on the safety of these chemicals has changed with time. The EA required data to decide on a regulatory approach for managing the soft furnishings at end of life, depending on their POPs concentrations, once they entered the waste stream.

The Solution

WRc’s waste and resources team developed and agreed a comprehensive sampling plan with the EA before carrying out site visits across the UK to sample and test the components of end-of-life soft furnishings.

POPs analysis is both highly complex and costly, so a hand-held X-ray fluorescence analyser was used to provide primary information on 100-300 samples for bromine as an on-site screening step. Subsequent specialist POPs analysis by an external laboratory showed the relationship between bromine and specific POPs and the proportion of samples which exceeded threshold limits.

The Outcome

The study has provided new information about the proportion and types of soft furnishings that exceed POPs limits once they enter the waste stream. This data set has been used to inform the EA’s position on regulating this waste stream.