A method was developed to study reductive transformation of highly brominated diphenyl ethers (BDEs). The method development is a part of a broader project where it will be used to determine the susceptibility of environmental pollutants to reductive conditions, in an attempt to create a scheme for determination of chemical’s persistence. This paper focuses on identification of octabrominated diphenyl ether transformation products from reductive debromination of the three nonabrominated diphenyl congeners (nonaBDE), BDE-206, -207 and -208. Sodium borohydride was used to explore the reductive debromination of the nonaBDEs. The transformation products were collected at two time-points and identified products were quantified by GC–MS. The reduction of the nonaBDEs lead primarily to debrominated products, mainly octaBDEs. The three nonabrominated DEs gave isomer-related transformation product patterns. BDE-207 and BDE-208 showed a propensity for ortho-debromination in the initial reaction step, while no discrimination between initial debromination positions was seen for BDE-206. All three nonabrominated DEs displayed a preferred initial debromination on the fully brominated DE ring.

An existing substitution reaction method was improved as part of a system to measure the persistency of selected chemicals in the environment by evaluating their chemical reactivity. Hexachlorobenzene (HCB), pentachlorobenzene, 1,2,4,5-tetrachlorobenzene and 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene were selected as model compounds. Sodium methoxide in methanol was used as a nucleophile and found to be stable for at least 35 days after preparation. The substitution reaction system was modified so that nitrogen protection was not necessary to avoid oxidation and hydrolysis effects, which led to improved results. The reactivity of polychlorinated benzenes (PCBz), which substituted chlorine for methoxide according to a second-order rate constant, increased as the number of chlorine atoms on the benzene ring increased. HCB was selected as a standard for the k₂ calculations of the substitution reactions. A normalized k₂ (k_N) was calculated as k_N = k_PCBz/k_HCB. GC–MS analysis confirmed that the reactions were pure nucleophilic aromatic substitutions without side reactions.